Free Republic

One basic rule of thumb to understand in Catholic/Protestant conversations is that it is not the case that Catholics rely on Sacred Tradition and Protestants don’t. Rather, Catholics (and, by this, I mean “educated Catholics speaking out of the Magisterial teaching of the Church”) rely on Sacred Tradition and know they do, while Protestants rely on (parts) of Sacred Tradition and (usually) don’t know they do.So, for instance, despite Paul’s prescriptions (directed only at clergy of his day) that a man must be the husband of but one wife, nowhere in the text of Scripture is it made clear that...

<p>It’s not easy walking through the minefield called Middle Eastern politics, and a Vatican document released Sunday managed to criticize Israel, Egypt, Islam and even Christian fundamentalists.</p> <p>The 46-page text, “The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness,” will serve as a working document for an October meeting at the Vatican about the Mideast.</p>

Holy Scripture, despite all appearances, will not always be easy to interpret. We can be lulled into thinking our “common sense” and “by the letter” interpretation of a text is what God intends us to get out of it. However, if this is the case, there would be little to no debates about its meaning; there would be little confusion as to its purpose and how it applies to us today. St. Peter would not have needed to tell us that no prophecy of Scripture is to be interpreted privately, because all interpretations of Scripture would end up the...

Uh oh. Fundamentalist Christian leader George Rekers, who founded the politically active and virulently anti-gay Family Research Council with Dr. James Dobson, has been caught by a Miami newspaper on vacation with a ‘rent boy’. "The pictures on the Rentboy.com profile show a shirtless young man with delicate features, guileless eyes, and sun-kissed, hairless skin. The profile touts his “smooth, sweet, tight ass” and “perfectly built 8 inch **** (uncut)” and explains he is “sensual,” “wild,” and “up for anything” — as long you ask first. And as long as you pay. "On April 13, the “rent boy” (whom we’ll...

Pakistan on Sunday angrily rejected a media report that raised fears of a militant takeover of the Taliban-hit nation's nuclear weapons and suggested that the US had a hand in protecting the arsenal. In the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that US officials had negotiated pacts with Pakistan to provide security for the nuclear arsenal in extreme circumstances. It also raised the possibility that the threat to the security of the nuclear programme might come not from Taliban rebels battling the government, but from a "mutiny" by fundamentalist elements within the powerful military....

Updated August 18, 2008 (first published June 4, 2008) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) - Many people have walked into the Roman Catholic Church through the broad door of the “church fathers,” and this is a loud warning today when there is a widespread attraction to the “church fathers” within evangelicalism. The Catholic apologetic ministries use the “church fathers” to prove that Rome’s doctrines go back to the earliest centuries. In...

Whip me in public, says Malaysian ex-model IANS 21 August 2009, 10:29am IST KUALA LUMPUR: A distraught and repentant former Malaysian model, who was convicted for drinking beer at a nightclub, wants to be publicly whipped with her family members watching. Set to be the first woman to be punished for violating the country's law that forbids liquor consumption in public, Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarnor is also hoping for media coverage, Harian Metro newspaper reported Friday. A court last month ordered that she be whipped six times for consuming alcohol.

Sixth in a series Few church members have really encountered serious anti-Mormon arguments. Most have heard a few LDS-critical comments in the media or from acquaintances. Those who have attended General Conference, a temple open house, or an LDS historical pageant have probably seen the protesters and may have accepted, out of curiosity, some of their anti-Mormon literature. After browsing the literature it is typically thrown away and the member's testimony remains unscathed. Other members may stumble upon anti-Mormon literature on the Internet. In the privacy of one's own home, sitting alone at the computer, they may not be as...

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) is trying to get his so-called Bible bill made into law. And while it's not likely to happen any time soon, it's a wonderful idea...at least in theory. What's wrong with a law which would declare 2010 the "year of the Bible"? Given that we already have days for secretaries, months for reading and have parsed the calendar for just about every other purpose and cause from artichokes to zebras, it's almost silly that we have not already done this. Would it really be so wrong to honor the most influential book, for better or...

Just so you know, Bart Ehrman says he's not the anti-Christ. Bart Ehrman says most of the New Testament is a forgery but it's still an important body of work. Bart Ehrman says most of the New Testament is a forgery but it's still an important body of work. He says he's not trying to destroy your faith. He's not trying to bash the Bible. And, though his mother no longer talks to him about religion, Ehrman says some of his best friends are Christian. Ehrman, a best-selling author and a professor of religious studies at the University of North...

I've always suspected that George W Bush wasn't really a big fan of Christian fundamentalists: he's an evangelical with Catholic leanings, not a Bible-basher. Now my suspicions have been confirmed by a new book about the worldwide religious revival called God is Back by the Economist's John Mickelthwait and Adrian Wooldridge.What did Bush really think of Bible-bashers?In the 2000 campaign, they report, Bush was visiting the Boeing Plant in Washington State when he was asked whether his enthusiasm for free trade with China might cost him the Christian vote. The reporter who asked him the question was from a...

British Columbia has charged two fundamentalist Mormon men with violating the Criminal Code provision against polygamy. The defendants will argue "God made me do it," claiming their practice of polygamy is part of the religious freedom guaranteed by Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms... ...What the U.S. Supreme Court said in its 1878 Reynolds decision is still compelling: Religious freedom means the state cannot punish people for religious opinions, but it can certainly regulate secular institutions such as marriage. The justification for prohibiting polygamy is that it leads to treating women and children as chattels and undermines...

Some 40,000 people in the US state of Utah live in illegal polygamous families in which a man takes more than one wife. These fundamentalist Mormons have now begun a campaign for a change in the law they regard as discriminatory and unfair... Under US law it is a felony, and technically the adults could be jailed and the children taken into care. But there are simply too many... Kody and Christine Brown live in a polygamous relationship...I had met the Browns a few hours earlier at the Utah State Legislature where they had joined a campaign to legalise polygamy....

The universe’s birth certificate Once you let go of the Bible as history, all Christian doctrine begins to disintegrate. Dr Nigel Leaves, the Warden and Dean of Studies at John Wollaston Anglican Theological College in Perth (Australia), provides a typical example in The God Problem: Alternatives to Fundamentalism.1 He says ‘the major factor in the waning of the Christian faith is its continuing insistence on a supernatural God—the Almighty, the lawgiver and judge.’ He considers four alternatives to ‘fundamentalism’ (i.e. believing in the God of the Bible), saying, ‘Traditional beliefs about God cannot be sustained in the light of the...

Middle East Apologetics by: Lance Nation, September 18, 2008 In a recent panel at the Brookings Institution, Dr. Kenneth Pollack proposed a new strategy for dealings between the United States and the Middle East. “The United States cannot run away from the problems in the Middle East. We must reach a balanced long-term relationship,” stated Dr. Pollack, a Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Greatly simplifying the ideas in his new book, A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East, Dr. Pollack argued...

The Catholic Church’s teaching on papal infallibility is one which is generally misunderstood by those outside the Church. In particular, Fundamentalists and other "Bible Christians" often confuse the charism of papal "infallibility" with "impeccability." They imagine Catholics believe the pope cannot sin. Others, who avoid this elementary blunder, think the pope relies on some sort of amulet or magical incantation when an infallible definition is due. Given these common misapprehensions regarding the basic tenets of papal infallibility, it is necessary to explain exactly what infallibility is not. Infallibility is not the absence of sin. Nor is it a charism...

What is Sola Scriptura? "We believe in the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety as the sole rule of faith for the Christian!" You may have heard these words or something very similar to them from a Fundamentalist or Evangelical Protestant. They are, in essence, the meaning of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, or "Scripture alone," which alleges that the Bible – as interpreted by the individual believer – is the only source of religious authority and is the Christian’s sole rule of faith or criterion regarding what is to be believed. By this doctrine, which is one...

Potter Author JK Rowling Equates Christians Who Avoid Potter with Islamic Fundamentalists Says "fundamentalists across all the major religions, if you put them in a room, they'd have bags in common! They hate all the same things" By John-Henry Westen EDINBURGH, March 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The newly released edition of the Edinburgh University Student newspaper, the oldest student newspaper in the UK, includes an interview with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.  In the interview Rowling claims to have received death threats from Christians opposed to her novels, calling Christian 'fundamentalists' "dangerous" and comparing them by inference to Islamic fundamentalists....

Islamic fundamentalists lose big in Pakistan vote By Saeed Shah, McClatchy Newspapers Tue Feb 19, 4:38 PM ET LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistani voters handed Islamist political parties a massive defeat Monday, virtually eliminating them from regional parliaments in an election that's likely to have a wide-ranging impact on efforts to rein in growing Taliban and al Qaida influence in Pakistan's North West Frontier province. In 2002, fundamentalist religious parties, some openly sympathetic to the Taliban, won 12 percent of the national vote. That was enough to form a regional government in the North West Frontier province, which borders Afghanistan ,...

Michael Moore Wannabe by: Bethany Stotts, September 13, 2007 The infamous far-left blogger, Max Blumenthal, perhaps best known for his harassment of Michelle Malkin at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has persevered in his online posting of pseudo-documentaries. Once again, Blumenthal has chosen the Christian Right as his target, seeking to expose what he describes as the “politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre” events of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) 2007 Washington-Israeli Summit. This reporter was also there and can fill in the part of the story that Blumenthal leaves out. In true Michael Moore fashion, Blumenthal deletes,...