Free Republic

Abp. Gullickson nixes Communion for divorced adulterers, active gays and LutheransBERN, Switzerland (ChurchMilitant.com) - Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, nuncio to Switzerland, is closing the door on Communion to civilly remarried divorcees, unrepentant homosexuals and non-Catholics such as Lutherans. Gullickson, appointed to his post in Switzerland in September, spoke frankly on these topics in a recent interview to the Swiss paper Tages Anzeiger. The 66-year-old archbishop, originally from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was formerly Ukraine's nuncio following a similar assignment in the Caribbean Islands. As nuncio, he's the "Pope's on-site contact person" as well as the Swiss Church's "advocate in matters beyond...

The year 1939 saw many milestones. Most critics say it was the best year for movies (Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Ginga Din, Stagecoach, for starters). For the Polish people, however, all the attention was on the terrifying sight of Hitler's tanks and shock troops rolling into their homeland. In Spain, the civil war ended and the rule of Franco began. I could go on.In Toronto, Canada, on Saturday, June 3, 1939, young Vincent Foy was ordained to the Catholic priesthood, the beginning of a high and lasting adventure: the...

Click on link. I don't whether to laugh or cry or both...

I just wanted to say Hi to all and wish you blessings in 2016. I miss being here. Things have been a bit upside-down in my life, including the loss of over half a dozen family members, and having a close friend, who is like family to me, become very ill with little time left. I've been spending precious little time in prayer, including my prayer group, but please know I haven't forgotten you or your intentions when I do- even if I don't know specifically what they are, I know that G-d in His Infinite Wisdom, does. Please pray...

In an interview with a French Catholic weekly magazine, Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard reflected upon his five years as Primate of Belgium and Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. The prelate's predecessor, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, led the see from 1979 until 2010. On December 12, Archbishop Josef De Kesel was installed as Archbishop Leonard's successor. Asked to comment on the steep rise in the number of seminarians-- from four in 2010 to 55 in 2015-- Archbishop Leonard told Famille chretienne that he spoke with prospective seminarians personally rather than referring them to the vocation office: "a man who wants to give his life to...

[big snip] Greg Burke also entertained good relations with the secular and Anglo-American media environment that still "makes the news" in the world.... Certainly he emphasized paying attention to secular media. The same happened with Msgr. Vigano... [snip] Msgr. Vigano knows how to communicate, and he communicates wherever he can get a good audience, and the secular media are in fact a perfect stage. Spreading the message is the most fundamental thing to him. As Prefect of the Secretariat for Communications [my comment: Whoa!], Msgr. Vigano will take over the reins not only of the structures, but also of the...

Moscow, December 28, Interfax - The chairman of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk has been cautious about prospects for convening a Pan-Orthodox Council. "There are doubts about the very possibility of a Pan-Orthodox Council being held at a time when some of the Orthodox Churches are in a state of unsettled conflict, and the leader of the Orthodox Church of the Czech lands and Slovakia has still not had his status recognized by a number of Orthodox Churches, to say nothing of the extremely unstable general political situation worldwide," the metropolitan said in a...

The vestry opposed his position. Kentucky Bishop Terry White did not support him Fr. Erdman said he had no choice but to resign or contradict his conscienceThe Rev. Jonathan Erdman, rector of Calvary Church in Louisville, KY, is resigning because he could not in good conscience perform gay weddings. He will leave his church Jan. 10, 2016. The vestry of his parish had been trying to force him out since the Episcopal Church authorized priests to perform gay weddings, and Fr. Jonathan, a high churchman, said he would not do that. The vestry has the support of Kentucky Episcopal Bishop...

A Catholic priest at the center of a contentious court case pitting the secrecy of the confessional against state laws designed to protect children is suing a Baton Rouge television station over the station's reporting of the case. The Rev. Jeff Bayhi claims he has been defamed and is seeking damages from WBRZ-TV in 19th Judicial District Court. In the underlying court case on which WBRZ has reported, Rebecca Mayeux claims when she was 14 she told Bayhi - her pastor at Our Lady of the Assumption in Clinton - that she was sexually abused by a now-deceased church parishioner....

Students also call on the University of San Diego to replace its mascot, Diego Torero, with a 'non-human' oneA coalition of students at the University of San Diego have demanded that administrators denounce Saint Junipero Serra as a mass murderer with a "colonialist legacy." They also want the Catholic saint's name stripped from a campus building at the private, Catholic university. The demand, one of nearly two dozen made by a coalition of black and LGBTQ students calling themselves "Concerned Students at USD," also demanded that administrators allow "a coalition of native students, staff and faculty" to rename USD's Serra...

None of us is 'innocent.' We have all gone our own way and done our own thing with disastrous results. In spite of the foolish notion often portrayed by some, no nation, no culture, no individual is 'basically good.' This world is filled with evil, and at one time or another, we've all had a hand in it. As the prophet Isaiah puts it, 'We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' Isaiah wasn't merely painting a picture of sinful...

The Maronite Catholic archbishop of Damascus-- the capital of war-torn Syria-- said in a Christmas letter that a new chapel will be dedicated in the city's suburbs on January 8. "In the middle of destruction this new chapel appears like the star of the Magi which leads to the Divine Child" said Archbishop Samir Nassar. "It is a true Christmas present, an oasis of prayer and a sign of joy and of hope in the middle of a world of violence, of intolerance, anguish, fear, and death."

London, England, Dec 22, 2015 / 05:26 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When the Titanic began to sink on April 15, 1912, Father Thomas Byles had two opportunities to board a lifeboat. But he forewent those opportunities, according to passengers aboard the sinking ocean liner, in order to hear confessions and offer consolation and prayers with those who were trapped aboard. Now, a priest at the former church of Fr. Byles in England is asking that his beatification cause be opened. Some 1,500 people died when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. Believed at the...

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has made a rare public appearance to thank civil and ecclesiastical authorities from Bavaria for donating this year's Vatican Christmas tree. Speaking to the dignitaries outside his Mater Ecclesiae residence in the Vatican on Friday (see video here), Benedict said the lighting of the 82 foot spruce represents the light of God's friendship to mankind which, he stressed, was especially important at this time. "The tree tells us that God is our friend and that we are therefore friends and siblings with each other," he said, according to Vatican Radio's German edition. "So this is a...

ROME, December 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - A heated exchange regarding global warming and magisterial teaching between a top Vatican official and various other presenters ended a December 3 Acton Institute conference in Rome. Argentinean Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, a close advisor to Pope Francis and the Chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences stressed that the pope's declarations on the gravity of global warming as expressed in the encyclical Laudato Si' are magisterial teaching equivalent to the teaching that abortion is sinful. Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the founder of Ignatius Press who...

For five years, Omar Fernandes worked as a member of the ground staff at the Mumbai airport. The end of each day was marked by coffee and conversations with colleagues. "Most of the men I worked with were in their 40s and 50s," says the 30-year-old. "They would talk about how miserable they were at work, how they were struggling to provide for their families. It seemed like such a hard life." These conversations began to crystallise his resolve to become a priest. It's something he'd been thinking about for four years already. "I was 24 when I got my...

The recent pronouncement by the Roman Catholic Church to the effect that Catholics should not proselytize Jews, as Jews, without a belief in the Nazarene, are saved, has left me confused. Am I to understand the Church has rejected its long-held theological belief in Replacement Theology, clearly evidenced in Nostra Aetate and replaced it with a theology that goes beyond Pre-millennial Dispensationalism which is largely associated with the American Evangelical Christian community? Unlike Replacement Theology, which sees the Jewish People as rejected by G-d, Premillennialism believes there is a role for the Jewish People in the future of mankind through...

A gross disparity exists in the archdiocese of New YorkOn a quiet day in July 2014, Fr. Justin Wylie boarded a plane from New York City to South Africa. After four years serving the faithful here, it would be his last time working as a priest in the archdiocese. His dismissal had nothing to do with personal misdeeds or accusations of fraud; he was sent packing based on a single homily earlier that summer in which he spoke up on behalf of the faithful and their beleaguered parish. Contrasted with the treatment of Fr. Peter Miqueli - the priest at...

Regensburg, Germany, Dec 17, 2015 / 03:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Bishop of Regensburg spoke out against "gender theory" in a homily recently made available in English - chastising the German bishops' conference for presenting the idea "as being basically compatible with Catholic belief." Celebrating the feast of St. Wolfgang, who was Bishop of Regensburg from 972 to 994, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer taught in an Oct. 31 homily that gender theory - the idea of separating biological sex from gender - does not contribute to equality, and is ultimately a denial of nature and the goodness of creation. It puts...

Photo: G.Balayants / Expo.Pravoslavie.Ru Introduction For well over fifty years now, and in virtually every country in Western Europe, that is in countries with a millennium of Catholic-Protestant culture, small numbers of Western Europeans have been joining one or other of the local dioceses of the Orthodox Church. In general it can be said that the numbers joining have been higher in the less traditional and more Protestant countries and lower in traditional Catholic countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal. And numbers have been much higher among more uprooted and cosmopolitan city-dwellers than among more traditional country-dwellers. Here there...