Free Republic

Bulgarian Defense Minister Anu Anguelov and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are expected to sign two defense cooperation agreements that will include joint military training and a memorandum on cooperation in the armament industry. ...

The Begin Sadat Center, a respected think tank based at Bar Ilan University, held a conference on November 23, 2011 on the subject of "Israeli Security in a New Regional Envornment", which focused on the so-called "Arab Spring" and its implicatons. Its experts concluded that the Arab Spring is not going to result in democracy, despite original hopes in the West, and may make things even worse for Israel. "As steep as the price for hitting Iran may be, a military strike on Iran will be less painful than the cost of living with an Iranian nuclear weapons threat," argues...

Italian clothes company Benetton backed down and pulled a photo montage showing the pope a leading imam from its new global ad campaign on Wednesday after the Vatican issued a stern condemnation. The company, which is no stranger to controversy over its advertising campaigns, said it was "sorry that the use of the image had so hurt the sensibilities of the faithful." The statement came shortly after the Vatican expressed "the firmest protest for this absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father." Benetton's poster showed Pope Benedict XVI kissing on the lips Egypt's Ahmed el Tayyeb, imam...

“The Church dies in Europe,” headlines Tygodnik Powszechny on the occasion of Benedict XVI’s visit to Germany starting September 22. Statistics published by the German episcopate tell it all: in 2010 over 180,000 Germans left the Church while only 170,000 were baptised. Also, the number of vocations has been dwindling: in 2009, 120 candidates entered the seminary; a year later there were just 79 of them. Similar trends are observed in countries like Spain or Ireland, once considered Europe’s Catholic vanguard. “Less churchgoers, less vocations, less support for the Christian ethic, less Vatican authority”, writes the Polish Catholic journal, noting...

New York’s budget-cutting Gov. Andrew Cuomo may have found himself in hot water with the Catholic Church. Dr. Edward Peters, a consultant to the Vatican’s highest court of canon law, told CNS News that Cuomo committed an “objectively sacrilegious” act that “produces grave scandal” when he received communion on New Year’s Day. Cuomo, a Democrat, is pro-choice and supports gay marriage, two positions the church vocally opposes. Of serious concern to Peters, however, is that Cuomo, who divorced Robert Kennedy’s daughter Kerry eight years ago, is currently living with Food Network host Sandra Lee. “Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York,...

A new survey shows 34 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population, say they have no religion. Even more significant is that one-third of those, about 11 million people, are Irish Americans. The survey by professors at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, does not explain why Irish Catholics are by far the highest number of people who are losing their religion every year in America. We can only surmise the reasons for this, but I have some definite ideas. Think church sex scandals. Let's look at the timeline first. The number of non-religious or "Nones" has nearly doubled between...

Biretta tips to Fr. Blake and to Sancte Pater who lead me to this story at The Irish Catholic and elsewhere. Government proposal to break the seal of confession is without precedent Thu, 14/07/2011 – 15:34The Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Children are all indicating that a proposed new law will require priests to break the seal of confession if someone confesses to them the crime of paedophilia. This would make us the one and only country in the Western world to have such a law. Even Revolutionary France in the days of its worst violence...

Although this is a report from the secular press, it highlights the very real costs to the people of Ireland, especially the priests who daily have to defend the what, at times, is almost impossible to defend. Having reported extensively on this over the past weeks, this will probably be the last time we shall post on this subject.The time now is for healing.From: The Irish Times Angry, isolated, paranoid and ageing, many of Ireland’s ‘ordinary’ Catholic priests feel failed and abandoned by the church hierarchy. But where were the ‘good priests’ when they were needed? THE VOICEMAIL was succinct....

Last week Enda Kenny spoke of his determination to ban the seal of confession,now a member of his Fine Gail party is calling for the cancellation of the International Eucharistic Congress due to be held in Dublin in 2012.  Even worse the proposal to cancel the Eucharistic Congress first came from a dissenting group of Catholic priests,the Association of Catholic Priests.The Guardian reports:Senator Cáit Keane said the Eucharistic Congress,which is scheduled to be held in the capital’s Phoenix Park in June,to be put off in the light of the row over the Vatican‘s attitude to clerical child sex abuse inquiries in the...

L’Osservatore Romano has published an article criticizing New York’s new mandatory sex education program. “The new course is part of an initiative launched by Mayor Bloomberg to improve the lives of black and Latino teenagers, saving them from a misery to which they seem destined,” writes Lucetta Scaraffia. “Once again, we see the repetition of a model already tried by many other countries: the State decides to include compulsory sexual education in schools, and the Catholic Church opposes it, earning the image of an obscurantist force, cruel because of it indifference to the consequences its refusal could have among young...

The Obama administration in a brief to the Supreme Court has backed the Vatican's claim of immunity from lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States. The Supreme Court is considering an appeal by the Vatican of an appellate court ruling that lifted its immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest from Oregon. In a filing on Friday, the solicitor generla's office argued that the Ninth Circuit court of appeals erred in allowing the lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused in the 1960's by the Oregon priest. The...

THE FIRST annual general meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests was told last night that if people had a vote on such matters church leaders would be swept out of office. If Irish Catholics had a democratic way of reflecting their feelings “church leaders would suffer a defeat as cataclysmic as that administered to Fianna Fáil in the recent general election”, Fr Kevin Hegarty said. What was needed was a church which would open its doors to “married priests and women priests”. It would benefit from secular insights like, for example, on human intimacy and democracy, he said. It...

Belfast, Northern Ireland (CNN) – A respected former Catholic bishop in Ireland is calling for an end to clerical celibacy in the wake of the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the church worldwide, and says he finds it "heartbreaking" that some prospective priests turn away from the calling because of the celibacy rule. In his recently published book, "A Troubled See, Memoirs of a Derry Bishop," Dr. Edward Daly said that allowing clergymen to marry would ease many of the church's problems. There needs to be a place in the modern Catholic church for a married priesthood, said Daly,...

The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify before an Irish commission investigating the clerical abuse of children and was angered when they were summoned from Rome, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks reveal. Requests for information from the 2009 Murphy commission into sexual and physical abuse by clergy "offended many in the Vatican" who felt that the Irish government had "failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations", a cable says. Despite the lack of co-operation from the Vatican, the commission was able to substantiate many of the claims and concluded that some bishops had tried...

Relations between the Vatican and Ireland deteriorated sharply as the Holy See appeared to ignore a commission looking into complaints of physical and sexual abuse of children by Irish priests, according to U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks. One cable from earlier this year says the Vatican was angered by the way the Murphy Commission -- which was looking into the how complaints of abuse had been handled by the Church and Irish government -- sidestepped normal diplomatic channels. The commission had written directly to the Vatican to seek information and requested a meeting with the Vatican's representative in Ireland....

DUBLIN -- A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police - a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests. The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits...

DUBLIN -- The Vatican encouraged Catholic bishops not to tell police about suspected pedophile priests and flouted Irish law, Ireland's lawmakers declared Wednesday in an unprecedented denunciation of the Holy See's influence in this predominantly Catholic country. The government and all opposition parties unanimously backed a motion accusing the Vatican of sabotaging the Irish bishops' 1996 decision to begin reporting suspected cases of child abuse to police. "This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a republic of laws," Prime Minister Enda Kenny told lawmakers. In a direct challenge to the Vatican, Kenny denounced what he called...

DUBLIN -- The Vatican encouraged Catholic bishops not to tell police about suspected pedophile priests and flouted Irish law, Ireland's lawmakers declared Wednesday in an unprecedented denunciation of the Holy See's influence in this predominantly Catholic country. The government and all opposition parties unanimously backed a motion accusing the Vatican of sabotaging the Irish bishops' 1996 decision to begin reporting suspected cases of child abuse to police. "This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a republic of laws," Prime Minister Enda Kenny told lawmakers. In a direct challenge to the Vatican, Kenny denounced what he called...

Officials issue rebuttal of report priests were told to keep quiet about abuse and hits back at criticism by Irish PM The Vatican has issued a tough rebuttal of a report claiming it told priests in Ireland to keep quiet about sexual abuse and described criticism by the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, as "unfounded". The Vatican sought to dismantle, point by point, claims made by the report, ordered by the Irish government and released in July, which prompted Kenny to condemn the Vatican as riddled with "dysfunction, disconnection and elitism". In the ensuing row, the Vatican took the highly...

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny made a speech condemning the Holy See in which he said that the 'rape and torture of children were downplayed or managed, to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and reputation.' He furiously denounced what he called 'the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism - and the narcissism - that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.'

The Vatican recalled its ambassador to Ireland in July after Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Holy See of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests. Gilmore said he did not expect the Vatican now to close its mission in Dublin. "The fact that we have chosen to close our mission in the Vatican and to have it serviced from Dublin doesn't necessarily mean that we won't have a Papal Nuncio here," he said.

Catholic Ireland's stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See's prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday. The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church's handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy. Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy in the Vatican. "This is really bad...

The U.S. has apologised after a diplomat told Indian school children that she looked like them when her 'skin became dirty and dark' after a long train journey.

ROME -- US secretary of state Hillary Clinton wound down after a packed day of international diplomacy in Rome by enjoying an outdoor dinner on a balmy evening at one of the Eternal City's famed eateries, ANSA news agency reported Friday. Clinton was joined by David Thorne, the US ambassador to Italy and brother-in-law of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), at the unnamed restaurant near the Campo de' Fiori in the center of the Italian capital Thursday evening after walking along the Via Condotti, a major shopping street, the report said.

Use however you want.

The worst thing that could foreseeably happen in Libya is for the situation to degenerate into an indefinite insurgent conflict in a failed state. Just a few weeks ago, that possibility did not realistically exist. It was created by our intervention, which managed somehow to combine the qualities of being too late, too hasty, and of the wrong kind. The beginnings of Libya’s slide into a chaotic insurgency are plain to see in the tactics Qaddafi’s forces have adopted: They now dress like the rebels and drive around in “technicals” (armed pickup trucks) rather than tanks. In a classic example...

JUNEAU, Alaska – Sarah Palin is extending her trip abroad with a planned stop in Israel. She is scheduled to deliver a keynote address Saturday night during the India Today Conclave in New Delhi and says she plans to travel to Israel on her way back to the United States.

TOBRUK, Libya (Reuters) – Libya's army pounded an opposition-held city in the country's west and battled fighters trying to block its advance on a rebel bastion in the east on Wednesday amid flagging diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States hoped for a U.N. Security Council vote aimed at ending Libya's conflict "no later than Thursday. Saying Muammar Gaddafi seemed determined to kill as many as Libyans as possible in his violent effort to quell a month-long uprising, she...

In the heyday of the Oslo peacemaking era, it would be the work of American diplomats to prevent Israeli outrage over the horrific murders Friday evening of five civilians -- including three children -- in the West Bank settlement of Itamar from undermining the "peace process." But today there is little peace process to protect. With the exception of three weeks in September 2010, there have been no negotiations between the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority during the entire Obama administration. Indeed, there has been less peace diplomacy between Arabs and Israelis in the current administration than during...

Seeking to contain the fallout from very undiplomatic remarks by a U.S. diplomat, the United States on Thursday mollified Japan by replacing the official who allegedly said Okinawans practiced "extortion." In Tokyo, officials were visibly pleased at the speed with which Washington moved to ensure there would be no rupture in U.S. relations with Japan. Kurt Campbell, the visiting U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, informed Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto in a meeting Thursday morning that Kevin Maher, director of Japan affairs at the State Department, had been replaced by Rust Deming, according to a...

George Clooney has revealed the reason he will never become a politician - he has a bad boy past. The Hollywood star, who has campaigned tirelessly for the people of Sudan, said he wasn't squeaky clean and his past could come back to haunt him if he ever held office. 'I didn't live my life in the right way for politics, you knowI f***ed too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that's the truth,' he said.

The Obama Administration cast its first veto in the United Nations on Friday, February 18, killing a Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlement activity. Its poor handling of the entire episode has left just about everyone angry at the United States , and is therefore a manifest failure of American diplomacy. The Palestinian Authority began to talk about this resolution months ago. The United States could then have adopted a clear position: put it forward and it will be vetoed. That very clear stand might have persuaded the Palestinian leaders and their Arab supporters to drop the...

Pakistani officials say President Obama's national security advisor summoned Pakistan's ambassador to the White House Monday evening to deliver a threat from the president: Release Raymond Davis, an American being held in Lahore for killing two Pakistanis, or face the consequences. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon told Ambassador Husain Haqqani, according to two Pakistani officials involved in negotiations about Davis, that the U.S. will kick Haqqani out of the U.S., close U.S. consulates in Pakistan, and cancel an upcoming visit by Pakistan's president to Washington, if Davis, a U.S. embassy employee, is not released from custody by Friday. The outlines...

A high-stakes international standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions came no closer a resolution Saturday as the latest round of talks aimed at curtailing the controversial program ended in failure in Turkey. The two-day meeting in Istanbul between Iran and six world powers was in effect stalled from the very start, with Tehran insisting that it has the right to continue enriching uranium and demanding an end to United Nations sanctions. Ashton said any expectations that Iran would respond positively to the ideas Western diplomats brought to the table were crushed.

A BIZARRE accident involving warthogs delayed the arrival of US Ambassador to Harare according to a WikiLeaks cable. Ambassador Charles Ray failed to arrive in Zimbabwe on November 3 2009 after the wild animals strayed onto the runway where they were struck by an Air Zimbabwe plane. Security officials forced passengers to surrender any photographic evidence of the crash before they were allowed to leave. All night flights on that day, including Ray’s South African Airways flight were cancelled. However, the warthogs saved the day for Getrude Hambira, the Secretary General of the General Agriculture Plantation Workers Union. The unionist...

Seeking to reassert the State Department's role as the primary agent of Washington overseas, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday announced an ambitious overhaul of diplomacy and development. And she promised to do it without spending a lot more money. Mrs. Clinton, in presenting a two-year review that has been one of her signature projects, declared that "leading through civilian power saves lives and money." Among key changes is a heavier emphasis on resolving conflicts and a pledge to reinvigorate the United States Agency for International Development.

U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke has died. He recently underwent operations to repair a tear in his aorta, the large artery that moves blood from the heart to the rest of the body. Holbrooke, who had been serving the Obama administration as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was stricken on Friday during a meeting at the State Department with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was rushed to the hospital for a 20-hour operation that was followed by an additional procedure on Sunday. Clinton said Monday there has been an "outpouring of support" for Holbrooke from around the world. Afghan...

USA's Sweden ambassador has reported that Sweden is a "strong and pragmatic partner", whose official non-alignment does not reflect reality, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks this week. Among the wealth of documents that the whistleblower website Wikileaks has exposed include several hundred from the US embassy in Stockholm, showing a close security arrangement with the US, according to the Svenska Daglbadet daily. In a classified telegram from May 4th 2007, prior to prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's visit to the USA, the then US ambassador to Sweden, Michael Wood wrote that Sweden was a "pragmatic and strong" partner....

Mr. King, whose program is carried on CNN’s channels around the world, has long had a reputation for softball questions. So Mr. Putin’s decision to appear on the program allowed his voice to be heard both in the United States and abroad while avoiding being challenged on contentious topics like his own grip on power and the limits on human rights and free speech in Russia. In the interview, Mr. Putin also warned that Russia would develop and deploy new nuclear weapons if the United States did not accept its proposals on integrating Russian and European missile defense forces —...

Should WikiLeaks expose the world's secret diplomatic backroom dealings? Put it to the vote!

White House official tells ABC News that the U.S. is going to spend a great deal of effort trying to get China to take a more “robust” stand against North Korea’s actions. “We need to send a strong signal to the Chinese that they need to stand up to North Korea,” the official says, adding that Russia’s statement condemning this attack was much stronger than after the North Koreans sank the ROKS Cheonan (PCC-772) in March 2010. “There’s a greater degree of alarm in the international community,” the official said, though China needs to be worked on. There are myriad...

LISBON, Nov. 20, (Xinhua) -- Shortly after his meeting with EU leaders, U.S. President Barack Obama summed it up by saying "This summit was not as exciting as other summits." Relations between the United States and the EU, the two economic giants with a combined population of 800 million, about half of the world's economic output and a third of world trade, are extremely important, but meetings between their leaders are not noted for generating much excitement. Obama graciously attributed the lack of fireworks to the fact that both sides agree on most issues in their talk characterized by shared...

The Obama administration could be overstating what U.S. diplomats can do to contain Iraq's ethnic and sectarian tensions without U.S. military forces, a State Department audit concluded Tuesday, raising fresh concerns about the planned pullout of American troops next year. The auditors also questioned whether American diplomats who remain behind will be adequately protected against insurgent violence, and their report faulted Washington for its planning of the transition from a U.S. military-led mission in Iraq to one run by American civilians in 2011.The audit's findings echo worries expressed by some U.S. defense analysts and former diplomats. They say hard-won security...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama met with activist-actor George Clooney at the White House on Tuesday to discuss U.S. involvement in Sudan ahead of a critical election early next year in Africa's largest nation. Clooney recently returned from Sudan, and is asking the U.S. and world community to use international pressure and robust diplomacy to prevent violence ahead of the Jan. 9 election. The election is an independence referendum on south Sudan that is likely to split the country in two, and there are fears that the vote could lead to a new outbreak of north-south civil war.<>

This analysis identifies patterns exhibited by the Iranian government and the Iranian people since ancient times. Most importantly, it identifies critical elements of Iranian culture that have been systematically ignored by policymakers for decades. It is a precise understanding of these cultural cues that should guide policy objectives toward the Iranian government.

US President Barack Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James Jones has said in a CNN interview that the US may be ready to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if the country would be ready to return to negotiations regarding its nuclear program. In an interview on CNN Wednesday, Jones said “the door’s open” for a meeting between Iran and the US. "One thing they might do is return our three hikers. That would be an important gesture. It could lead to better relations,” Jones said, speaking about an opening move to jumpstart discussions.

It is hardly a typical gift from one world leader to another – a painting by a graffiti artist with three convictions for criminal damage. But that is one of the presents David Cameron chose to give Barack Obama on his first visit to the White House as Prime Minister, apparently to demonstrate they share a common taste in contemporary art. For Mr Cameron picked a work by a little-known British artist who perfected his skill defacing or beautifying – depending on one's point of view – the underpasses, bridges and train carriages of his native south London. Eine's handmade...

This is a truly remarkable video found at Powerline of NASA administrator Charles Bolden telling al-Jazeera that NASA is now tasked "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." The agency that sent a man to the moon has been enlisted to improve the self-esteem of Muslims.

How does a Bedouin Arab become a diplomat for Israel? That's the question that Ishmael Khaldi hears all the time. He admits his story is unusual: an Arab working and fighting for Israel. But "the challenge is to use it and turn it into understanding," he says. Currently an advisor to Israel's foreign affairs minister, Khaldi sits down in our studios for a conversation about politics, foreign relations, and growing up as a shepherd's son on the outskirts of Israel.

President Nixon had his flaws from ethics to some of his policies. However if one takes a closer look at his accomplishments while in office, they might see a version of President Nixon that is much different than that often portrayed in the media and I suspect President Nixon’s stock will continue to rise slightly over the next couple decades.