Free Republic

‘Deeply Honored’: Jesuit Priests Praise Biden After Brunch at White HouseA pair of controversial liberal priests visited President Joe Biden’s White House Sunday as part of an event billed as a “St. Patrick’s Day Brunch with Catholic Leaders.”Frs. James Martin and Thomas Reese, SJ, were among the brunch’s attendees. Three days earlier, Biden running mate Vice President Kamala Harris became the highest-ranking incumbent official in American history to visit an abortion facility, where she praised Planned Parenthood and attacked the work of pro-life elected officials.Addressing Martin, Reese, and the other attendees on Sunday, Biden said:The Catholic Church has always stepped...

On this date in 1666, the pastor Andreas Koch suffered the pains of standing up against witch hunts in his town of Lemgo: Koch himself was beheaded as a wizard. Lemgo recorded a busy witch-hunt record with an estimated 250 cases in the 16th and 17th centuries. But the bulk of those cases came surprisingly late — from 1653 to 1681, the period after the Thirty Years’ War witch-smelling acme. As we’ve seen before in these grim annals, elites were not safe from the Hexenverfolgung; this, perhaps, is the reason that even we latter-day seculars still have such a visceral...

A 9/11-style committee to investigate the January 6 Capitol incursion may be imminent. The House passed a bill Wednesday authorizing a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 pro-Trump assault on the U.S. Capitol, but the proposal could stall in the Senate after GOP leaders in Congress and former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to reject it. The legislation was the product of negotiations between the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Democrat Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, and the panel’s top-ranking Republican, John Katko of New York. Modeled on the probe carried out by the 9/11...

John Brennan just said on MSNBC that HE knows the Biden intel community “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” the pro-Trump “insurgency” that harbors “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians”

Was Hebrew DNA recently found in American Indian populations in South America? According to Scott R. Woodward, executive director of Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a DNA marker, called the "Cohen modal haplotype," sometimes associated with Hebrew people, has been found in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. But it probably has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon -- at least not directly. For years several critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the Book of Mormon have claimed that the lack of Hebrew DNA markers in living Native American populations is evidence the book can't...

Dr. Rodney Stark has written nearly 40 books on a wide range of topics, including a number of recent books on the history of Christianity, monotheism, Christianity in China, and the roots of modernity...His most recent book is Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History (Templeton Press, 2016), which addresses ten prevalent myths about Church history... CWR: You begin the book by first noting your upbringing as an American Protestant and then discussing “distinguished bigots”. What is a “distinguished bigot”? ... Dr. Rodney Stark: By distinguished bigots I mean prominent scholars and intellectuals who clearly are antagonistic to the...

House Democrats are looking to prevent the whistleblower from being identified by holding the person's testimony at a remote location and potentially changing their appearance and voice. Democrats are going to great lengths to hide the whistleblower's identity out of fear the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee could leak their identity, according to The Washington Post, which cited three people familiar with the discussions. Democrats are considering holding testimony outside the Capitol as well as a staff-only session that would bar lawmakers from questioning the whistleblower, according to the Post. Democrats are also weighing options to distort the whistleblower's...

Upon returning from his historic Apostolic Journey to the Arabian Penninsula, specifically the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis said that the Islamic world and the Christian world will work together to promote "common values." Speaking before his general audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, Pope Francis discussed his meeting with the Great Imam of Al-Azhar and their signing of the document on the Human Brotherhood, which condemned all forms of religious violence, and the spreading of authentic values throughout the world. "The Great Imam of Al-Azhar and I signed the document on the Human Brotherhood, in which together we...

Another Columbus Day came and went...although not as such in Minneapolis, which voted this year to honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead, a time to reflect on the price American Indians paid for the greed and ruthlessness of my European ancestors. Yet it is ironic that Columbus should take the blame, for he was our first “multicultural” hero. An Italian Catholic who sailed for Spain, Columbus was one of a handful of celebrated Americans who did not fit neatly into the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant mold. The worst strike against Columbus was that he was a Roman Catholic. Catholics had a special...

Your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes devoted to the Holy Christian faith and to the spreading of this faith, and as enemies of the Muslim sect and of all idolatries and heresies, ordered that I should go east, but not by land as is customary. I was to go by way of the west, whence until today we do not know with certainty that anyone has ever gone there. He sent me that I might bring the true faith to the Indians. ~ Christopher Columbus There are many reasons for defending what crucially needs to be defended, that except...

Cue the Papa John vanishing act. Papa John’s, the embattled 5,212-unit pizza chain, has sent precise instructions to its store owners on how to remove every last image and signature of founder John Schnatter from its locations. Store owners should remove Schnatter’s signature from the wooden paddles used to take pizzas out of the oven — and replace it with images of vegetables or cheese...

Can you be a Christian and a politician? I'm not talking about a fundamentalist who would seek to apply Biblical precepts across all of society. I'm talking about a "moderate" Christian, one who knows how to distinguish between the moral principles that rule his life and the secular values that rule the life of the wider community....... Machiavelli's response to this question was brutal: No, there isn't. And to cite Isaiah Berlin's interpretation of Machiavelli: Christianity is an estimable religion, admirable even. But works only for private matters........ We're all sinners. Or rather, I do not. Because the initial question...

Heresy consists in the formal denial or doubt by a baptized person of any revealed truth of the Catholic Faith; as a crime it consists of the outward and pertinacious manifestation of the sin. As we can see below, Scripture speaks frequently of heresy entering the Church. We can also see that heresy is possible even with a Pope. In that case, the Pope is immediately ejected from the Church and papal infallibility no longer applies. See quotes below. References to Heresy in Scripture: Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you...

Beginning in 1478, the Spanish Inquisition systematically silenced any citizen who held views that did not align with the king’s. Using the powerful arm of the government, the grand inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, and his henchmen sought out all those who held religious, scientific, or moral views that conflicted with the monarch’s, punishing the “heretics” with jail sentences, property confiscation, fines, and in severe cases, torture, and execution. One of the lasting results of the Spanish Inquisition was a stifling of speech, thought, and scientific debate throughout Spain. By treating one set of scientific views as absolute, infallible, and above...

The Horrors of the Inquisition and Its Modern Advocates By Julio Severo As perfidious as to commit a crime is to excuse, understate or deny it. On October 2015 Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho said in his Brazilian Twitter, "A entidade chamada Inquisicao e uma invencao ficcional de protestantes." Translation: "The entity called the Inquisition was a fictional invention of Protestants." His original statement is here. Other pro-Inquisition statements by him are exposed here. If everything Olavo says about the Inquisition is correct, then Protestants are liars, because they have been saying about the horrors of the Inquisition for...

Bible Ignorance, Clergy Corruption and the Inquisition in England before the Reformation Bible Illiteracy as the Cause of Widespread Corruption and Deadly Censorship By Julio Severo In plain 21th century and specially in the pro-life and conservative movement, it makes no sense to defend the Inquisition, a highly divisive subject contributing nothing to the pro-family cause. But since 2013 I have seen the Inquisition, which tortured and murdered Jews and Protestants, being passionately excused and even defended by some Catholics. See "Can a Pro-Life Activist Defend The Inquisition?" in 2013 and "Neocons, the Inquisition, Russophobia and Lies" in 2015....

A Global Inquisition to Put Homosexuals to Death? By Julio Severo According to People for the American Way, in their project Right Wing Watch, Theodore Shoebat posted a video declaring that "sodomite homo Sharia" is being imposed on America by "sodomite bastards" and "faggots" who do nothing but "go around spreading AIDS." The Right Wing Watch said, "The only solution, he declared, is the imposition of a global law criminalizing homosexuality that will be enforced by a modern-day Inquisition with the power to put gays to death." According to this website, Shoebat said, "I believe in Inquisitions, I believe...

Neocons, the Inquisition, Russophobia and Lies By Julio Severo A charge of “liar” is a very serious charge. In his article “Putin’s Paid and Unpaid Liars,” Cliff Kincaid, a Catholic neocon, levels this charge against Don Hank, an evangelical conservative. Kincaid’s contention with Hank is over Malaysian flight MH17, destroyed last year in eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers. Hank opined, in an e-mail group, that there are doubts about the culprit in this case. For Kincaid, there are no doubts now that the Dutch Safety Board has issued a report indicating that a Russian BUK missile is to...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Neil Cavuto today that Obama is using ISIS arguments against Christians. "Not only is this president unwilling to go after, to call out radical Islam by its name, but at time President Obama has acted like an apologist for radical Islam… When I said President Obama is an apologist, you may remember earlier when President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and the King of Jordan was scheduled to speak there but he had to fly back to Jordan because the day before ISIS had taken a Jordanian pilot, put him in a cage...

Spanish Inquisition Question: What was the Church’s involvement with the Spanish Inquisition? It seems clothed in shadows. — Dorothy Perez, San Antonio Answer: This brief column cannot cover all the details and provide extensive references. However, the Spanish Inquisition was run by the secular government, not by the Church. The Church did have its own inquisition, distinct from the secular government of Spain. Most people preferred the Church’s inquisition and often appealed cases there since it was more clement and just by their estimation. The term “inquisition” simply refers to an inquiry into charges leveled against a person, usually of...