Free Republic

A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him. Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following remarks: I want to express my gratitude to the many people who have written to me and offered their support over these last seven months. After having diligently and thoroughly examined accusations, the Manhattan District Attorney has stated that he is not going forward against me September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, will be the 40th anniversary of my ordination as...

A prestigious New York City priest has been accused by a Bronx woman of forcible touching. Ashley Gonzalez, a 22-year-old who worked as an overnight security guard at St. Michael the Archangel Church on West 34th Street in Manhattan, is calling for the arrest of 75-year-old Father George William Rutler. "It was like a monster," said Gonzalez describing her alleged encounter Rutler. News 12 obtained video she recorded that she said shows Rutler watching pornography on his computer in front of her. News 12 has blurred the alleged sexually explicit video. "He looked at me with a smile, looked away,...

The name of the stepbrother of William the Conqueror was a palindrome, and the ladies who made the Bayeux Tapestry must have enjoyed embroidering it along with the caption under the scene of Odo at the Battle of Hastings. A year after the Norman Conquest, he became Duke of Kent, assuming vast lands and power, but William had already seen to it that he had been made a bishop at about the age of nineteen. He was serious about his episcopal office—even at Hastings where a servant carried his crozier into the fray. Careful of the canonical prohibition against clerics...

The Supreme Court’s abuse of its authority in the decision redefining marriage as an institution based on feelings rather than fact and sanctioning deviancy as a civil right was expected, but the surprise was its sentimental substitution of nihilistic narcissism for jurisprudence, expressed in an amorphous substitute for English diction. This passed a death sentence on Christian culture, just as Roe v. Wade sanctioned the deaths of millions of infants. As Christ rose from the dead, so can our nation, but only the cynic and the naïf will deny that the next steps will be attacks on Christ himself in...

Most Recent Column from Fr. Rutler September 23, 2012 Pope Benedict XVI was in Lebanon last week where the principal Catholic rite, the Maronite, traces its roots to Saint Maroun, who in the fourth century was a friend of Saint John Chrysostom. The Holy Father spoke to people who “know all too well the tragedy of conflict and . . . the cry of the widow and the orphan.” Like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, the Pope linked violence to contempt for the right to life: “The effectiveness of our commitment to peace depends on our understanding of human life.” The...