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But now, after a chaotic introductory week that sparked national debates on McCain's judgment, Palin's experience and even her teenage daughter's pregnancy, the initial signs are not entirely positive for the reinvigorated Republican ticket. Interviews with some two dozen women here after Palin's convention speech found that these voters were not swayed by the fiery dramatic speeches or compelling personal biographies that marked both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Instead, they were thinking about the price of milk -- nearly $5 a gallon -- or the healthcare coverage that many working families here cannot afford. Even if they admire Palin's...

Johnny Telvor was not happy about Barack Obama becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Not happy at all. Standing outside the sturdy courthouse in the sweltering heat of a West Virginia afternoon in the small town of Williamson, Telvor smoked a cigarette and bluntly gave his opinion of Obama's historic mission to be America's first black president. 'We'll end up slaves. We'll be made slaves just like they was once slaves,' he said. Telvor, a white Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in West Virginia's primary, said he planned to vote for Republican John McCain in November. 'At least he's an American,'...

"The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and suicide bombings worldwide have changed not only the way we live but the way we look at those around us, especially Muslims. "Islamophobia" has entered the American vernacular, and the anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudice it describes remain common. Content Special Section: What Would You Do?But what if you witnessed "Islamophobia" in action and saw someone being victimized because of someone else's prejudices? What would you do? ABC's production crew outfitted The Czech Stop, a bustling roadside bakery north of Waco, Texas, with hidden cameras and two actors. One played a female customer...

We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush. We disagree with them strongly on what makes a good Supreme Court justice.

What has happened to the simple principle of telling the truth? That question should be posed to the Mormon community. I’m not an expert on anything—but I do know a little bit about Mormonism—or, as they prefer to be called, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS). My father was a Mormon for several years and many of his family were Mormons. I have also spent a considerable amount of time reading LDS literature. Again, that doesn’t make me an expert, but at least educated. I have observed a notable change in the way the LDS Church...

Just when he thought the media lovefest would never end–what with the deeply troubling open-borders and soft-on-crime charges of his critics failing to stick–GOP front-runner Mike Huckabee gets a Saturday surprise from the Associated Press, which dug up an old questionnaire probing his views on AIDS funding and homosexuality: Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.” As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated...

While Texan Ron Paul’s stock is soaring nationally, there is trouble on the home front. In September, Paul finished third in a straw poll of 1,300 Texas Republican activists who had been delegates to recent Republican conventions. The congressman corralled just 17 percent of the votes cast, trailing California’s Duncan Hunter with 41 percent. This outcome says Texas Republicans aren’t terribly concerned about viability. Otherwise, one of the national front-runners like Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney would have beaten these long-shots. But if they were willing to “waste” their votes on Hunter, why didn’t most back a fellow Texan? The...

Much has changed in the once-blue-collar neighborhood of Locust Point in South Baltimore. Factories have made way for pricey developments, watering holes have been displaced by upscale eateries. But the edifice on Fort Avenue, Our Lady of Good Counsel, has stood unaltered, long a pillar for the area's Catholics. Down the street is the Episcopal Church of the Redemption. A few blocks away is the Christ United Church of Christ, better known as the German Lutheran church. For more than 100 years, congregants from these three churches have gone to one another's dinners and carnivals, attended funerals and weddings together,...

t a speech in Davie Monday hosted by the conservative Federalist Society, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney defended passing over GOP lawyers for judicial appointments. Of the 36 lawyers Romney nominated when he was governor of Massachusetts, 23 were registered Democrats or independents who donated to Democratic candidates or voted in Democratic primaries, according to an analysis by the Boston Globe that was circulated by rival Fred Thompson. Two appointees supported expanding gay rights. 'Romney's clear affinity for liberal activist Democrats on the bench in Massachusetts doesn't match well with the Federalist Society's belief in judges who `say what the...

"I think being pro-life is more than saying you'll appoint strict constructionist judges," is what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told reporters last week. He was talking about former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but he could just as well be talking about himself. Romney, who for more than 35 years claimed to be avowedly pro-choice, and ran as such for the U.S. Senate and for the Bay State governorship, has been using his and his family's money to create a "pro-life" record. Earlier this year, his wife, Ann, was given an award by a Massachusetts pro-life organization after...

Monday night, KDFW-Channel 4 ran a piece about 70-year-old James Walton, owner of Able Walton Machine & Welding in West Dallas, who, early Sunday morning, shot and killed and man trying to break into his business. What made Walton's story so extraordinary was that it was the second time he'd killed an intruder in three weeks. As it happens, Walton also lives at his place of business. But today you will not find the Fox4 story on the station's Web site; there's a page for it, but no accompanying video. (Update: It's available here.) That's because Rebecca Aguilar's piece elicited...

The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company. Asked...

Here is Fred Thompson outlining his approach to defending traditional marriage by stopping judicial activism to promote same-sex marriage. Fred was speaking to the editorial board of the Des Moines Register. This is the complete video segment as opposed to a disingenuous cropped version of 1 minute also posted on YouTube.

The long-awaited publication of Clarence Thomas's memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," out Monday, makes you wonder: how come none of the presidential candidates have said a word about the Supreme Court in any of their debates? Three sitting justices are expected to resign in the next four years--and they're all on the liberal side: John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The publication facts behind Thomas's book ought to be discussed by all the candidates: he received an advance of $1.5 million in 2003 from HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you thought the Court dealt with...

LAWRENCEBURG, Tenn. - "Freddie! Freddie!" came the chant from nearly 3,000 people as towering Fred Thompson entered the final minutes of a pivotal game for his Lawrence County High School basketball team. Grabbing crucial rebounds, Thompson helped win the regional final. It hardly mattered that the team didn't survive the 1959 state tournament. Next year, Freddie would be a full-time star. But there would be no next year. Just as Thompson turned 17, his girlfriend became pregnant, and he married her in a small, quickly arranged ceremony. The high school rules were clear: Married students did not play sports. It...

Fred Fizzlesby John Gizzi Human Events Posted: 9/23/2007 Mackinac Island, Mich.Going back to when Fred Thompson first began exploring a bid for the presidency earlier this year and his first speech before the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California, through his address to the American Legislative Exchange Council in Philadelphia where he was on the same billing as presidential rival right up to his dinner speech this evening to the Michigan Republican Leadership Conference here, there is a strong case to be made that the former television actor just doesn't live up to the advance reviews. Sure, Thompson can deliver...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Former Washington lobbyist turned GOP Presidential candidate Fred Thompson is bringing his campaign follies to Texas today in an effort to woo southern voters. Thompson was supposed to add enthusiasm to the GOP race, filling the void of a true conservative, but his performance has been disappointing as he continues to make major gaffes across the country. The latest example took place Monday when Thompson announced that he would attend a debate in New Hampshire that had been canceled months ago. [Boston Globe, 9/18/07] And this past weekend in Florida, Thompson was caught completely off...

Do not be fooled by Jenna Bush. She has wrapped herself in the golden glow of celebrity. But she is something else entirely. For almost seven years, the blond Bush twin has reveled in the trappings associated with Hollywood starlets -- from wearing made-to-order designer clothes to smiling brightly from the glossy pages of a Vogue photo spread. She has walked red carpets and swanned past velvet ropes. Like so many celebrities, she has taken on a cause -- education -- and is using her fame to stir interest and attract media attention to an upcoming book tour. She has...

Wayne Barrett, the professional anti-Giuliani, has a piece in this week's Village Voice considering what might have made America's Mayor's daughter, Caroline, grow up to be a Barack Obama supporter. Some fun details of life at home with the Giulianis: 1. Rudy brought Caroline to City Hall on Take Your Daughters to Work Day in 1994 and 1995, his first two years as mayor, but never again — because by 1996 "the relationship between Giuliani and his twentysomething press secretary had so poisoned the marriage that all such family events were impossible." 2. The Giulianis went on a family vacation...

......there have long been whispers that Giuliani's third marriage, not his two divorces, could be his biggest personal problem. Vanity Fair put its long-awaited profile of Judith (don't call her Judi!) Giuliani on the Web, and the whispers are about to get a lot louder. --SNIP-- Giuliani's wife is a political liability, and that isn't good........Giuliani has a pattern of terrible judgment, from promoting the integrity-challenged Bernie Kerik from his driver to police commissioner to (almost) Homeland Security chief to continuing to employ his friend, Monsignor Alan Placa, despite credible accusations he not only helped cover up child abuse in...

Judith Giuliani always dreamed big, which got her out of small-town Pennsylvania, through two marriages, and into the arms of Rudy Giuliani. But, as her husband runs for president, people are asking, "Who does she think she is?" It was the first anniversary of 9/11 at Ground Zero, an occasion when the names of the dead were read aloud. The first reader was to be Rudy Giuliani, New York's mayor at the time of the disaster, whose actions during those terrible days would prove a political boon. An army of policemen flanked him?an excessive number, spectators thought, since, due to...

Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani has close ties to a Catholic priest accused of sexually molesting boys and who also was the lawyer for a now-closed Whitinsville counseling house for troubled priests that has been described as the center of a pedophile sex ring. Monsignor Alan J. Placa, who works for Mr. Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, was legal adviser in the 1980s to the House of Affirmation, where priests accused of sexual abuse were sent for psychotherapy and other counseling services. The center closed in 1987 amid a financial scandal. Monsignor Placa, who while an active priest arranged...

He disappointed conservatives during his eight years in the Senate. Is there any reason to think this Washington insider and veteran trial lawyer would be any better as President? The frustration of conservatives is understandable. Faced with the prospects of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, or Mitt Romney as the next Republican presidential candidate, many are pinning their hopes on former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee. Could this actor-politician be the new Ronald Reagan? Mainstream media types assure us that he is. His record suggests otherwise. This is the second time conservatives have pinned their hopes on Thompson. When he was...

Over at Captains Quarters, Captain Ed ponders an interesting question brought forth by one of his readers. Apparently, the only evidence of Fred's work at National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association is a copy of the NFPRHA's board minutes from September 14, 1991 that claims that the group had hired Fred. The big question is, at what point did Fred begin working there? Here's what Captain Ed found. Now a new bit of indirect evidence has been found. Arent Fox brought Thompson into the firm to be "of counsel" in 1991 for his expertise in their lobbying business, including...

On the official Web site for his anticipated presidential run, former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) says that during the Watergate hearings he "gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office." A former assistant U.S. attorney in Tennessee, Thompson served as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee. But a story published in yesterday's Boston Globe reveals details about his role in the Watergate probe that suggests Thompson was something other than the good-government crusader he now makes himself out to be. It begins: The day before Senate...

ABC News' Jake Tapper Reports: Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., has angered animal rights activists for strapping his dog to the roof of his car on a family trip from Boston to Ontario, Canada. According to the Boston Globe, in one of the family's 12-hour drives to their family's cottage in Canada over 25 years ago, Romney strapped a dog carrier to the roof of the car for the whole trip -- with the family Irish setter, Seamus, inside. Seamus protested in a scatological way, going to the bathroom on the roof of the car. Animal rights...

FRANCONIA, N.H. -- Judging from his history of gunplay and boasting about violence, detailed in court records, Gregory W. Floyd was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. The moment came last Friday, when the 49-year-old former Marine jumped into the middle of a deadly shooting, grabbed the gun from a dying policeman, and killed the man , Liko Kenney, 24, who had shot the officer. Now Floyd is being hailed as a hero. But police reports, neighbors, and acquaintances paint a more complex portrait of a man who lived by his own code, and whose past, as much as his...

By the time Fred Thompson decides whether or not to join the presidential fray, you will have heard the story of his red pickup truck at least a dozen times. The truck in question is a 1990 Chevy, which the famed statesman-thespian rented during his maiden Senate campaign in 1994. The idea was that Thompson would dress up in blue jeans and shabby boots and drive himself to campaign events around the state. Upon arriving, he'd mount the bed of the truck and launch into a homespun riff on the virtues of citizen-legislators and the perils of Washington insider-ism. For...

Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race By Kevin Merida and Michael A. FletcherWashington Post Staff WritersSunday, April 22, 2007; A01 Adapted from the book "Supreme Discomfort:The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas" by Kevin Meridaand Michael A. Fletcher, Doubleday, New York, © 2007. Drugs have been a persistent problem in Pin Point, Ga., a tiny rural settlement best known as the birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Neighborhood leaders tried everything to chase the scourge away -- a march, a warning sign along the main drag, even a pilgrimage by the local church congregation, which prayed...

BOSTON - To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in the back of his pickup truck. "I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I've been a hunter pretty much all my life," he said this week in Keene, N.H., to a man sporting a National Rifle Association cap. Yet the former Massachusetts governor's hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last...

Updated:2007-03-05 14:55:26 Giuliani Estranged From His Children Some Say Personal Problems May Hurt Prospects CBS News NEW YORK (March 5) -- It doesn't look like Rudy Giuliani's two children will have a role in his presidential campaign. According to press reports, the GOP frontrunner's third marriage has alienated his son, Andrew, 21, and daughter, Caroline, 18, from their father. Giuliani's 21-year-old son, Andrew, told the New York Times that he would be too busy working on his golf game to participate in his father's presidential campaign. "There's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife," the younger...

Romney's Changing Views: Candid or Convenient? As Candidate Builds Support From Conservatives, He Confronts Accusations He's a Flip-Flopper By MARCUS BARAM Feb. 23, 2007 — - One candidate believes abortion should be legal, endorses embryonic stem cell research, supports a minimum wage increase, believes gays and lesbians deserve full equality and should be allowed to serve openly and honestly in the military, and opposes capital gains tax cuts. The other candidate is firmly against abortion, opposes stem cell research, vetoed a minimum wage increase as governor of his state, vehemently opposes gay marriage and wants to maintain the "don't...

This past Sunday, thanks to Mayor David Cohen, the city of Newton paid special tribute to Father Robert Drinan, who was our Congressman for ten years until the Pope asked him to retire from Congress and Barney Frank replaced him. He had been the Dean of the Boston College Law School and a well-known theologian, author and educator. Since his retirement from Congress, he had been teaching at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, and he passed away on January 28. He was a frequent visitor to his sister-in-law and nieces, who currently live in Newton. At the remembrance,...

James and Kathleen Pfeiffer were devoted to their parish and pastor, attending Mass every Sunday and helping pay for new bells at their church in southwestern Virginia. So when their priest was charged in January with stealing $600,000 from the church, the couple was devastated. "I would feel better about all this if he wasn't a priest and was just some con man who conned us," Kathleen Pfeiffer said. "He was loved by us. He knew everybody would do anything for him." The past year saw several cases where clerics were accused of stealing from their faithful. Some churchgoers say...

We hear it from some religious pulpits, and we think it’s the ‘gospel’ truth. But the real truth is you never really know what a Catholic believes, unless you are one. Unfortunately the majority religion of Congress is Catholic, but you’d never know by the legislation delivered. Currently, well over 100 members of Congress claim to be Catholic. Catholicism has five “non-negotiables” which are inherently evil. Those include abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research(not adult stem cell research). Those few tend to eliminate a number of congress people from the practice of Catholicism. A few of...

Homosexual rights campaigners have gained permission from the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to hold Mass for gay parishioners. While the Church has allowed celibate gays to receive holy communion, traditionalist Catholics believe that practising homosexuals should be barred from the sacramental rite because their way of life defies Church teaching. Now, however, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has taken the controversial step of allowing fortnightly Masses in his Westminster diocese specifically for homosexuals. A statement from the diocese stressed that the move did not represent a shift in Church teaching, which says that homosexual practice is a...

SAN DIEGO -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said in a letter to parishioners this weekend that it is considering declaring bankruptcy to avoid going to trial on more than 140 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests. The pastoral statement, signed by Bishop Robert Brom, said if fair settlements can't be reached with abuse victims, "the diocese may be forced to file a Chapter 11 reorganization in bankruptcy court." The diocese is concerned "that settlements not cripple the ability of the Church to accomplish its mission and ministries," the letter said. The letter was included in the regular...

Kenneth Briggs, former religion editor of The New York Times and author of Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church's Betrayal of American Nuns, shares the fruits of an eight-year study which brings to light possible reasons for the diminishing numbers of American sisters in our time. Tracing a detailed history of events from the 1950s until the present, Briggs provides specific examples of typical religious communities and interviews with individual sisters. Well documented and fairly presented, the book describes the struggles and misunderstandings between the church's hierarchy and the sisters who took seriously the mandate for renewal directed to religious...

MILWAUKEE - Bishop Raymond Burke's recent announcement that Wisconsin lawmakers who support abortion rights can no longer receive communion ignited a firestorm in the American Roman Catholic Church, especially among those U.S. bishops who wished they'd thought of the idea first. Burke cited Vatican doctrine and canon law when he instructed diocesan priests to withhold communion from all Catholic senators and congressmen until they "publicly renounce" their support of abortion rights. Burke's decision left other American bishops scrambling to regain the moral high ground in a church torn by scandals. In Burlington, Vt., the Most Rev. Kenneth A. Angell threatened...

web] Every now and then, you get to see a reporter gently suggest that a major religious leader - take Pope Benedict XVI, example - has tried to pull a fast one. That may be what's happening in this story earlier this week by New York Times reporter Ian Fisher about the pope's complicated address on faith and reason, which included a highly significant illustration linked to Islam. Actually, I think that Fisher did a good job of getting at the heart of this one. Let's face it: Popes are not sound-bite-friendly speakers. They have been known to float a...

The Vatican's official newspaper on Tuesday decried media images of Saddam Hussein's hanging as a "spectacle" violating human rights and harming efforts to promote reconciliation in Iraq. The Vatican, which opposes the death penalty, was among the first voices abroad to denounce Saddam's execution Saturday, saying then that it was "tragic news," even in the case of someone guilty of grave crimes, and expressing worry that it could fuel revenge and fresh violence. Also Tuesday, the Italian government said it will take "formal steps" in a renewed push for a U.N. call for a moratorium on the death penalty. The...

He hardly seems the obvious candidate for Catholic approval, but the Irish author who was once a byword for decadent behaviour is quoted in a new book by a Roman priest as an example to 21st-century Christians. "I can resist everything except temptation," Oscar Wilde once famously said. He was speaking for us all. Even for the Church of Rome, it turns out. For that very remark is quoted, with approbation, by a leading Vatican writer, Fr Leonardo Sapienza - a member of the protocol department of the Pontifical Household of Pope Benedict XVI - in a book out yesterday....

Jan. 5, 1066: Edward the Confessor, the English king responsible for the construction of Westminster Abbey, died. Edward is the only English king revered as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Jan. 5, 1527: Felix Manz, a Swiss Anabaptist is executed by drowning. Manz’s conflict with Lutheran and Reformed Protestants stemmed from his denouncement of the continued practice of infant baptism. Jan. 6, 548: the Jerusalem church observed the Christmas feast for the last time on the older date before switching, with the rest of the Western Church, to the now traditional date of December 25. Jan. 6, 1850:...

BRIGHTON -- In a non descript cardboard file box, in an ordinary cabinet, inside the modest building that houses the archives of the Archdiocese of Boston, is a manila folder with a name written in small, neat letters on its tab: Matthew. The folder contains an aged document and a small tarnished metal ornament, displaying a fragment of bone about the size of the capital O in this sentence. The certificate, signed by a long-forgotten Vatican official, asserts that the chip is a relic, nearly 2,000 years old and taken from the body of St. Matthew -- one of the...

WASHINGTON (CNS) – A federal judge in Louisville, Ky., has denied a Vatican request to dismiss a sex abuse lawsuit seeking damages from the Holy See. U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II ruled Jan. 11 that U.S. bishops and priests are employees of the Vatican within the terms of the Federal Sovereign Immunity Act. The act generally exempts other sovereign states from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, but it allows U.S. courts to adjudicate lawsuits seeking monetary damages from a foreign country for personal injury caused in the United States by an employee of that country "while acting within...

ROME – An Italian group on Thursday asked Pope Benedict to order the removal of all religious works of art and Catholic traditions that still smack of anti-Semitism. The Roman Association of Friends of Israel sent a letter to the Pope asking him for a 'clear and strong signal' that he would not tolerate any residual or resurgent forms anti-Semitism in religious art or popular culture, such as processions. The group sent the letter to protest against an exhibition in a church in the Umbrian city of Orvieto which includes several old paintings depicting Jews desecrating a consecrated communion host,...

NEW YORK (AP) — Cardinal Edward Egan faced the faithful on Friday to explain a word that will change the lives of Roman Catholics in the nation's second-largest archdiocese: realignment. Translated into action, it means the Archdiocese of New York — more than 2.5 million people living from Manhattan to the Catskill mountains — is closing churches where services are poorly attended. "The decision is not based on economics at all — it's because of the shifting numbers of Catholics," said archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling. "One hundred years ago, 80 percent of New York's Catholics lived in Manhattan, the Bronx...

Christianity 101 stipulates that the body of Jesus isn't available for viewing. Other religions have it easier. Several hundred people turned out in 2005 to view a touring collection of Buddhist relics at the Thousand Buddha Temple in Quincy. The exhibition displayed relics of Siddhartha, the religious figure most outsiders know simply by his title -- Buddha. The relics included flakes of dried blood, fragments of bone, and cremated remains believed to be those of Buddhism's founder, who died about 2,500 years ago. For Buddhists, viewing a relic is an intense experience. "I can attain pure mind at the moment...

THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY A Roman Catholic Dogma Originating with Heretics and Condemned as Heretical by 2 Popes in the 5th and 6th Centuries. The Roman Catholic doctrine of the assumption of Mary teaches that she was assumed body and soul into heaven either without dying or shortly after death. This extraordinary claim was only officially declared to be a dogma of Roman Catholic faith in 1950, though it had been believed by many for hundreds of years. To dispute this doctrine, according to Rome’s teaching, would result in the loss of salvation. The official teaching of the Assumption comes...

One thousand one hundred and four years ago a criminal trial took place in Italy, a trial so macabre, so gruesome, so frightful that it easily qualifies as the strangest and most terrible trial in human history. At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann's The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), "subjected to the most barbarous violence." For the past several centuries the papacy...