Free Republic

Self-styled Catholic critics of the free market and “Americanism” have adopted the term “social Magisterium” to suggest that there is a coherent and morally binding body of papal teaching on politics and economics, from which we can derive specific policy initiatives and firmly condemn alternatives as “un-Catholic” or even (that dreaded word) “dissenting.” Hence defenders of market economics, or opponents of mass immigration, can be tarred with the same brush as those who favor women’s ordination or homosexuality. Indeed, if we accept the premise of a “social magisterium,” we are led to believe that we can actually build up a...

“How many divisions does the Pope have?” Joseph Stalin once ironically asked the official warning him of the Vatican's “power.” Decades later, totalitarian regimes have all but vanished, while the Catholic Church, founded strictly on an evangelical message of love, has continued to grow. “I’d like to buy your argument,” replied the professor, “but the facts are other than you assert. How is it that Catholic countries such as Spain and Portugal promoted the slave trade in America, if, as you claim, the Catholic Church actually brought the end of slavery? How do you explain certain bishops of the American...

Have you noticed that the word “lust” is being purged from the Bible? The Greek word for lust (epithemia) points to inner sin thirty-four times in the New Testament. In the vast majority of these places it has traditionally been properly translated as “lust” or the archaic and more precise word, “concupiscence.” Not Any More Unfortunately, modern translations, such as the New International Version (NIV) are abandoning the word lust....

A LINE IN THE SAND by Michael Farris The following article will appear in the Second Quarter 2014 Home School Court Report, due in mailboxes late August. Two prominent speakers on the homeschooling circuit have experienced dramatic falls from favor due to admitted sin. Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips have both been accused of serious sins involving young women. The accusations are sexual in nature. Both men have admitted to some form of sin with regard to these accusations, although each has disputed some of the details. Gothard disputes that his sins were sexual in nature. Phillips admits to an...

I have argued before that, in their fullest, libertarianism and Catholicism are incompatible -- but to what degree are they so? Leaders of the libertarian movement have certainly said silly, anti-Catholic things. Ludwig von Mises, for example, compared Christ to the Bolshevists and also said, "..[I]t is the resistance which the Church has offered to the spread of liberal ideas which has prepared the soil for the destructive resentment of modern socialist thought" (Socialism, Chapter 29). Translation: opposition to liberalism of one stripe must be blamed for inspiring liberalism of another. Huh? Much of the conflict between libertarians and the...

A Christian man was executed during the night by a high-profile ruler after making an uncompromising defense of real marriage. The Christian, who was renowned for his holiness, had told the ruler in public that his relationship with his partner was “against the law” of God. The Christian’s words enraged the ruler’s partner who successfully plotted to have him permanently silenced. John the Baptist was first imprisoned before he was beheaded. The Catholic Church honors him today, August 29, as a martyr and saint. While John’s death happened a little less than 2,000 years ago, his heroic stance for real...

Eucharistic Adoration. Credit: Elisa Pires via JMJ Rio 2013/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug 28, 2014 / 04:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A lawyer who helped recover a stolen Host that organizers of an Oklahoma City black mass intended to desecrate said that the Church’s legal victory could have far-reaching effects. “I don’t think we’re going to see Satanists doing this again, or they’ll going to understand we’re going to come after them, anywhere, any time this happens,” attorney Michael W. Caspino of the Irvine, Calif.-based law firm Busch & Caspino told CNA Aug. 27. “We’ve now gutted the...

Nathaniel Morales, who was recently convicted of sexually abusing boys he met in a Gaithersburg church decades ago, was sentenced to 40 years in prison Thursday. In two trials in May, jurors found Morales guilty of a series of counts of sex abuse and sex offense. Victims gave powerful testimonies of what Morales did to them and the lasting effect it had.

THE Catholic Church paid more than $40,000 in rent for a convicted paedophile priest who molested at least eight young boys and was set to stand trial on a string of new charges before he died earlier this year. Wilfred Baker’s crimes against children were so horrific he was placed on administrative leave in 1997 and never again worked as a priest, and was officially laicised in September 2012. But the Herald Sun can reveal the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne paid Baker’s rent for at least four years until his death in February, despite his sickening record of abuse on...

Planned Parenthood abortion business officials in Ohio are looking for volunteers to pray at a pryer event. No, Planned Parenthood is not asking people to pray for an end to abortion in the way pro-life advocates pray at prayer events like 40 Days for Life. Instead the abortion giant is hoping Buckeye State residents will pray for more abortions. plannedparenthood118As this Planned Parenthood announcement indicates, the abortion corporation wants people to join an abortion activist who is calling for prayer in response to the state’s refusal to expand Obamacare, which funds abortion and sends taxapayer dollars to the abortion giant....

A Florida Catholic parish's 45-year tradition of serving as a polling place for elections came to an end after Tuesday's primary after ongoing complaints by a handful of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual activists led church leaders to end their partnership with the Brevard County Board of Elections. Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Indialantic, FL, has hosted about 5,000 voters from three precincts in a multi-use area of the building that is separate from the main church. Florida Today reported that the trouble began in 2008, when the church displayed a message on its marquee urging parishioners to vote for...

The former Archbishop of Mosul, Amel Nona, said that the end of the Church in Iraq at ISISÂ’s hands is a warning to fellow Catholics throughout the world, particularly in the West: Please, try to understand us. Your liberal and democratic principles are worth nothing here. You must consider again our reality in the Middle East, because you are welcoming in your countries an ever growing number of Muslims. Also you are in danger. You must take strong and courageous decisions, even at the cost of contradicting your principles. You think all men are equal, but that is not...

A young refugee rests after having fled from ISIS and arrived in Ankawa in the northern part of Erbil, Iraq. Credit: www.ankawa.com. New York City, N.Y., Aug 26, 2014 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The leader of the World Jewish Congress slammed global apathy to persecution of Christians in the Middle East and other parts of the world, saying more countries should be moved to action. “The general indifference to ISIS, with its mass executions of Christians and its deadly preoccupation with Israel, isn't just wrong; it's obscene,” wrote Ronald S. Lauder in an Aug. 19 New York Times editorial....

You would see me across the room when we arrived on Saturday night for staff dinner. You’d signal to me in a personal and private way that you wanted me to sit with you. And you always positioned me just directly across from you. You’d slide your feet out of your shoes and play footsies with me. You would use your feet to feel But rather than offering that protection, you exploited that situation. You asked me to tell you how it felt. To tell you if my body was aroused by their touches. You wanted vivid details. But you...

An Open Letter to Duggar Defenders The problem real here is that you very likely do not understand the Duggar’s subculture Written by Libby Anne | Monday, August 25, 2014 The Duggars are part of a very specific subculture of the Christian homeschooling world, one dominated by leaders like Doug Phillips of Vision Forum and Bill Gothard of ATI, whose incredibly restrictive teachings and controlling practices have earned them the adjective “cult-like.” These organizations and leaders teach that children must be trained to obey their parents completely, without question, and with a smile; that women are not to have careers...

“Why is it,” said Jessica, my long-time friend, a non-observant Church of Scotland member, “that the Catholic Church won’t just, er, enter the modern era? Why are they so obsessed with sex?” Um, I thought, here we go. We were sitting in a coffee place in Edinburgh, trying to catch up from our busy lives. Even though our lives have taken different paths, Jessica and I go back a long time. I took a deep breath. “For the same reason that traditionally Jews forbade pre-marital sex, and sex outside marriage,” I said evenly. “After all, Christianity is an offshoot of...

An official declaration of Planned Parenthood as an enemy of the Church will be a real game changer. Such a declaration will prevent Planned Parenthood employees and volunteers from serving in positions of responsibility in our parishes. Simply put, Catholics could no longer hide behind an uninformed conscience in order to assist or promote Planned Parenthood or its agenda and be able to continue calling themselves Catholics in good standing. ~ American Life League’s Michael Hichborn in an August 25 press release announcing his group’s new campaign asking the Pope to declare Planned parenthood an enemy of the Catholic Church....

On Friday, the Obama administration revised the HHS mandate rules — the first revision since losing to Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court. The revisions provide no relief from the mandate and essentially restate how pro-life groups, like the Little Sisters, will have to pay huge fines if the violate the mandate. The upshot of the new rules? As Arina Grossu, Director for the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, tells LifeNews, it’s “the threat of crippling fines on non-profits who stand up for their freedom of conscience.” littlesisters2Congressman Chris Smith, the top pro-life advocate in the...

I am new to this journey. My daughter Faith is only 5 years old. She is mentally and physically disabled, still small enough to carry, quiet . . . mostly, and has not developed the larger, louder, and strange movements and sounds that many older people who are mentally and physically disabled seem to develop as they try to express themselves – yet. We have taken our daughter to concerts, plays, movie theatres, political speeches, pro-life fundraisers and community events, and spend a lot of time in hallways and lobbies when she does get loud. However, we’ve found that the...

By now, we’ve all heard the refrain that U.S. churches need liberalize their teachings on sexuality and homosexuality or rapidly decline. The logic behind the argument is simple: more and more Americans are embracing homosexuality and same-sex marriage, including growing numbers of religious Millennials. So long as churches remain the face of opposition to gay marriage, those churches will shrink into irrelevancy when gay marriage (inevitably, we are told) becomes a settled political issue. These arguments often see church acceptance of homosexuality as a carrot as well as a stick. It isn’t so much that denouncing homosexuality will drive people...