Free Republic

For those who have not yet heard, Holy Trinity Church, the former home of the German Catholic Community and the Traditional Latin Mass is being redeveloped into boutique condos. We posted last June that the property was up for sale, and in November we learned it had been sold, however the identity of the developer was not yet publicly available. Oddly, the archdiocese has not announced the sale price, or what will become of the millions of dollars of proceeds. Now the plans are up for approval by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. A picture of the proposed development can be...

My wife, Tina passed on to be with Jesus in glory one week ago today. As my sister in law aptly put it "there now remains a Tina shaped hole in our souls and we mourn her loss" but I take hope and peace in knowing that she is in a far better place now. She is free from disease, pain and sorrow and I await the day when we are re-united. After a 2 year battle with malignant melanoma she suffered a stroke about 2 months ago which robbed her of movement and most of her speech. She loved...

Who are the players opposing Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone? Catholic dissidents have been opposing the efforts of the San Francisco archbishop to reinforce the Catholic identity of his schools by asking teachers to witness to the Catholic faith, both inside and outside the classroom. But the intentions of Archbishop Cordileone’s critics seem far removed from the best interests of faithful Catholic education. At the end of April, representatives from Call to Action, DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Catholics for Choice and Human Rights Campaign met in Chicago to strategize how to best oppose Cordileone and...

MIAMI BEACH — Christians who have so far avoided controversial "culture war" issues will likely be pulled into those battles as their religious freedom becomes threatened due to gay marriage, Dr. John Inazu warned Monday. Theologically conservative Christian non-profit organizations, including churches, could face losing their tax exempt status or being shut down, and Christian doctors, lawyers, counselors and other professionals could be forced out of their professions, he explained. Inazu, associate professor of law and political science at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, was delivering a presentation, "Religious Liberty and the American Culture Wars," at the...

Crosses in every room at Washingon D.C.’s Catholic University of America are a human rights violation that prevent Muslim students from praying. That’s the complaint to the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights filed by a professor from rival George Washington University across town. GWU Law School Professor John Banzhaf takes the Catholic institution to task for acting “probably with malice” against Muslim students in a 60-page complaint that cites “offensive” Catholic imagery all over the Catholic school, which he says hinder Muslims from praying. Baffled Catholic University officials say they have never received a complaint from any of the...

“See, it is I who created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges a weapon fit for its work. And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc; no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD. (Isaiah 54:16-17)

Thirteen years ago Jim Cardosi’s wife, Cindy, discovered she had little time left to live.In 2002 she experienced symptoms resulting from a neurological illness that by 2005 would be identified as frontotemporal dementia or Pick’s Disease, which Cindy developed in her mid-40s.She required full-time care, so Jim retired from the military. They raised five kids together and built their lives around each other.Jim’s faith kept him poised throughout the illness, and he felt the call to the priesthood before her death. He cared for Cindy until her passing in July 2008 at 51 years old in their Jacksonville, Florida home.“I...

Monsignor Charles Pope writes, "The gospel from Sunday (John 15:1-8) presents us with an important meditation on the difference between love and kindness. Perhaps some further reflections from this gospel are in order today. There is an unfortunate tendency in our times to reduce love to kindness. Kindness is an aspect of love, but so is rebuke. It is an immature notion of love that reduces it merely to affirming, or that refers to proper correction as a form of “hate.” We saw in yesterday’s gospel that proper care involves the Lord “pruning” us so that we bear more fruit....

Toronto's Catholic Register is parrotting this story from RNS referring to a front-page article at L'Osservatore Romano calling the cartoons of Mohomet "blasphemous." This is quite incredible really. One can blaspheme God. One cannot blaspheme a man. If Mahomet ever really existed can be debated. If he did, he was a warlord; a murderer, a child-molester and a Jew-hating Christ denier -- and antichrist. He was no prophet. I'm not suggesting that we should engage in mocking anyone; but I won't call the mocking of a man, blasphemy because it is not. Shame on those Catholics who would use such...

This year marks the 750th anniversary of the death of St Simon Stock I wonder what you were thinking when you dressed this morning. Had you already laid out your clothes for the day? Did certain expectations dictate your choices? The simple fact is that how we dress can say a lot about who we are, what we do, how seriously we take life and its tasks. I have clear memories of one Christmas, when a child, having received a soldier’s outfit as a present and I can remember to this day the sense of pride and purpose that...

Many supposed "theological differences" between Catholics and Evangelicals are, I think, founded in semantics rather than in substantial disagreement. For example, when I was an Evangelical one of the periodic arguments I ran across against Catholic moral theology was that the concept of mortal and venial sin is unbiblical. Sin is sin, say Evangelicals, and there's no good in trying to make out some sins as "minor." To us Evangelicals such nice distinctions smelled a great deal like rationalization and looked like an escape clause from the commandment "Be holy, for I, the Lord, am Holy." After all, James wrote,...

Last week I delivered a guest lecture at a Christian liberal arts college entitled “Each Day Dies With Sleep: Literary and Theological Reflections upon Mortality.” As I thought through the topic over the previous weeks, two superficially disparate questions puzzled me. Why is it that the people most vocally committed to causes connected to death (abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia) are often the same who are committed to progressive sexual causes? And why do abortion advocates frequently see it not as a necessary evil but as a positive good? As to the first question, that the same people often, though not...

Powerful winds are blowing through St. Peter’s Square, setting up the perfect storm. Indeed, the climate is drastically changing in Vatican City as the world awaits Pope Francis’ environment encyclical. Behind the scenes of St. Peter’s, forces are at play to create a very problematic document influenced, and partly written, by rabid opponents of Catholic moral teaching.. As the keynote speaker at the final Pontifical environmental conference, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said climate change is the “defining issue of our times” and that it is “important faith groups are in harmony with this issue.” Moon said he was...

As part of the reforms prompted by Pope Francis, Germany's Roman Catholic Church has decided that lay Catholic employees who divorce and remarry or form gay civil unions should no longer automatically lose their jobs. According to Christian Today, Catholic Bishops have voted to adjust Church labour law "to the multiple changes in legal practice, legislation and society" so employee lifestyles should not affect their status in the country's many Catholic schools, hospitals and social services. It was gathered that the change came as the worldwide Catholic Church debates loosening its traditional rejection of remarriage after a divorce and of...

The CWR Blog Michael Coren goes Anglican, denounces Catholic moral teaching "I could not remain in a church that effectively excluded gay people," says the Canadian author and apologist, "I felt that the circle of love had to be broadened, not reduced." May 02, 2015 02:35 EST Carl E. Olson This past Monday, I received an e-mail with the news that Michael Coren had left the Catholic Church and recently entered the Anglican communion. Coren, the Canadian author and apologist who has written a monthly CWR column ("Controversies with Coren") since September 2013, had apparently been attending an Anglican church...

Until his recent conversion to Anglicanism, the broadcaster and author Michael Coren was one of Canada’s best known Catholics. He has a Catholic wife and four Catholic children and is the author of books that include “Why Catholics Are Right.” So when he was formally welcomed into an Anglican congregation in Toronto the other day, after worshipping with them privately for a year, the news caused a stir in the Catholic world. False rumours were circulated about his motives. Old scandals from a career in punditry were dredged up. The uproar cost him several speeches to conservative American Catholic groups,...

Statue in a Brittany town square deemed to violate the separation of Church and stateA French court has ordered the removal of a statue of St John Paul II which it said violated the separation of Church and state. Authorities have been given six months to remove a 29ft (8.7m) statue from the town square in Ploërmel, Brittany. The sculpture, by Russo-Georgian Zurab Tsereteli, shows the late pope praying underneath an arch topped by a cross. It was intended as a gesture of friendship from Russia to other countries with a Christian heritage. A court at Rennes said the problem...

Every home schooling parent has been asked the S-Question: “What about socialization?” The implications (real or imagined) of the question are less than flattering: Students who attend schools outside the home are socialized better because they spend so much time with their immature peers, whereas students who attend school within the home are poorly socialized because they spend so much time with their mature parents. Home school families do not interact with one another. Socialization that occurs on the soccer field, during debate rounds, and in church doesn’t count (or is somehow inferior). Students who attend school outside the...

Jimmy King, a Dallas Theological Seminary graduate who now serves as senior pastor of Proclamation Church in Orlando, accused the school said to be one of the top 20 seminaries in the U.S. of not providing him and other black graduates with enough support in finding employment, and further asserted that he was once told, "we've never placed a black graduate to a white church." King, who graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in 2006 with a master of theology in pastoral ministry and leadership degree, according to his church's website, revealed during The Reconciled Church: Healing the Racial Divide Summit...

This past weekend, noted progressive-Christian writer Rachel Held Evans published a widely shared and widely read piece in the Washington Post decrying the Evangelical church’s shallow attempts to appeal to Millennials by trying to make church “cool.” Ms. Evans critiques hashtag campaigns, young-adult groups with names like “Prime” and “Vertical,” and concert-style worship services. She mocks talk of “market share” and “branding,” and in so doing sounds every bit as traditionalist as those who despise the praise choruses of the typical Evangelical megachurch and long for the simple “old-time religion” of their grandparents.But that’s not really her point. Evans...