Free Republic

His first public performance shows him to be a partisan weasel of the first order. The Peter Strzok hearing was a travesty, starting with the fact that he testified as a cocooned, lawyered-up government employee still working for the FBI. It is outrageous that he hasn’t been fired yet. He even still has a security clearance! That alone is proof of the deep state’s hold on certain executive branch agencies. If the FBI keeps its so-so employees close, it keeps its worst employees even closer. That Strzok could huddle with FBI lawyers while stonewalling a Republican-led committee speaks to the...

Red Greater Double FIRMLY RESTING UPON PETER, the Church turns to him whom the Spouse has given to be her Head, and testifies to him no less veneration and love, than obedience and fidelity; such is the craving of her gratitude. Moreover she is fully aware of what is thus expressed by St. Peter Damian (or as others say by a disciple of St. Bernard), “none may pretend to intimacy with our Lord, unless he be intimate with Peter.” How admirable is this unity in God’s advance towards his creature! but, at the same time, how absolute is the...

Red Semidouble PETER AND PAUL cease not to hearken to the prayer of their devout clients throughout the world. Time has wrought no change in their power; and in heaven, no more than formerly on earth, can the gravity of the general interests of holy Church so absorb them, as that they should neglect the petition of the humblest inhabitant of the glorious city of God, of which they were constituted, and still are, the Princes. One of the triumph gained by hell, at this day, is the lulling to sleep of the faith even of just men; hence...

Red Semidouble ALTHOUGH AMONGST THE SAINTS there is none who is undeserving of earth’s humble homage, or whose intercession is powerless in our behalf, yet the cultus rendered to each one, and the confidence evinced, necessarily vary in proportion to what we know of his or her glory. It is therefore only just, as Saint Leo remarks in today’s Office, that we should honor in a most special manner those whom divine grace has exalted so far above all others, that they are considered, as it were, the two brilliant eyes of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, giving light...

Red Double of the First Class (with an Octave) SIMON, SON OF JOHN, lovest thou me? Behold the hour when the answer which the Son of Man, exacted of the Fisher of Galilee, re-echoes from the seven hills and fills the whole earth. Peter no longer dreads the triple interrogation of his Lord. Since that fatal night wherein before the first cock-crow, the Prince of the apostles had betimes denied his Master, tears have not ceased to furrow the cheeks of this same Vicar of the Man-God; lo! the day when, at last, his tears shall be dried! From...

Violet   JOHN THE BAPTIST, placed on the confines of the two Testaments, closes the prophetic age, the reign of Hope, and opens the era of Fiath which possesses the long expected God, though as yet without beholding him in his Divinity. Thus even before the Octave is ended, wherein we pay our homage to the son of Zachary, the apostolic confession comes grafting itself on the testimony rendered by the Precursor to the Word, the Light. Tomorrow all heaven will re-echo with the solemn protestation first heard at Cesarea Philippi: Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living...

Red Simple THE GLORY OF MARTYRDOM illumines this day with a profusion rarely met with on the Cycle; and already we seem to descry the rosy dawn of that glad day, excelling all the rest, on which Peter and Paul will consummate, in their blood, their own splendid confession. Italy and Gaul, Rome and Lyons concur in forming a legion of heroes in the service of Heaven. For today, Lyons the illustrious daughter of Rome, is keeping the special festival of a whole phalanx of warriors, headed by the veteran chief, Saint Pothinus, disciple of Saint Polycarp, who in...

White Double OUR PASCHAL SEASON, which has already given us the admirable Doctor, St. Leo, brings before us today the humble Peter Celestine—Sovereign Pontiff, like Leo, but who was no sooner throned on the Apostolic See, than he left it and returned to solitude. Among the long list of sainted men, who compose the venerable series of Roman Pontiffs, our Lord would have one, in whose person was to be represented the virtue of humility;—that honor was conferred on Peter Celestine. He was dragged from the quiet of his solitude, compelled to ascend the throne of St. Peter, and...

Red Double THE HERO DEPUTED THIS DAY by the Church to greet our Risen Lord was so valiant in the Good Fight that Martyrdom is part of his name. He is known as Peter the Martyr; so that we cannot speak of him without raising the echo of victory. He was put to death by heretics, and is the grant tribute paid to our Redeemer by the 13th Century. Never was there a triumph hailed with greater enthusiasm than this. The Martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury excited the admiration of the Faithful of the preceding Century, for nothing...

White Double IT IS THE FEAST of the austere reformer of the 11th century, Peter Damian, the precursor of the holy Pontiff Gregory the Seventh, that we are called upon to celebrate today. To him is due a share of that glorious regeneration which was effected at that troubled period when judgment had to begin at the House of God. The life he had led under the Monastic Rule had fitted him for the great contest. So zealously did he withstand the disorders and abuses of his times that we may attribute to him, at least in great measure,...

White Greater Double WE ARE CALLED UPON, a second time, to honor St. Peter’s Chair: first, it was his Pontificate in Rome; today it is his Episcopate at Antioch. The seven years spent by the Prince of the Apostles in the second of these cities were the grandest glory she ever had; and they are too important a portion of the life of St. Peter to be passed by without being noticed in the Christian Cycle. Three years had elapsed since our Lord’s Ascension. The Church had already been made fruitful by martyrdom, and from Jerusalem she had spread...

Critics have found a number of ways to describe Sony Pictures’ new adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s mischievous yet beloved bunny, “Peter Rabbit.” The modern Peter Rabbit is a frat bro, a “raging narcissist,” a vandal that escalates a feud into a “truly sadistic display of violence.” Now, the bunny character has been billed as something else — a food allergy bully. The scene prompted intense backlash from allergy advocacy groups and parents of children with food allergies, who said it mocked an attack that in real life could have proved fatal. The segment led to a hashtag — #boycottpeterrabbit —...

White Double THE RANSOMER OF CAPTIVES, Peter Nolasco, is thus brought before us by the Calendar, a few days after having given us the Feast of his master, Raymund of Pegnafort. Both of them offer to the Divine Redeemer the thousands of Christians they ransomed from slavery. It is an appropriate homage, for it was the result of the Charity which first began in Bethlehem, in the heart of the Infant Jesus, and was afterwards so fervently praciced by these two Saints. Peter was born in France, but made Spain his adopted country, because it offered him such grand...

White Greater Double THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL told Mary, in the Annunciation, that the Son who was to be born of her should be a King, and that of his Kingdom there should be no end. Hence, when the Magi were led from the East to the Crib of Jesus, they proclaimed it in Jerusalem, that they came to seek a King. But this new Empire needed a Capital; and whereas the King, who was to fix his throne in it was, according to the eternal decrees, to re-ascend into heaven, it was necessary that the visible character of his...

White Double THE SAME divine Providence which would not that the Church should be deprived of the consolation of keeping, during Advent, the feast of some of the Apostles, who announced to the Gentiles the coming of the Messias, has also willed that the holy Doctors, who defended the true Faith against heretics, should be represented in this important season of the Catholic Year. Two of them, St. Ambrose and Peter Chrysologus, shine as two brilliant stars in the firmament of the Church during Advent. It is worthy of note that both of them were the zealous avengers of...

White Greater Double QUOD DUCE TE MUNDUS SURREXIT IN ASTRA TRIUMPHAMS, HANC CONSTANTINUS VICTOR TIBI CONDIDIT AULAM. Because the world under thy conduct has risen triumphant to the very heavens, Constantine the conqueror has built this temple in thy honor. This inscription stood in letters of gold over the triumphal arch in the ancient Vatican Basilica. Never did the Roman genius frame a more magnificent utterance in so few words; never did the greatness of Simon Bar-Jona appear to such advantage on the seven hills. In 1506 the great arch that had looked down upon twelve centuries of prostrate...

White Double “O happy penance, which has won me such glory!” said the Saint of today at the threshold of heaven. And on earth, Teresa of Jesus wrote of him “Oh! what a perfect imitator of Jesus Christ God has just taken from us, by calling to his glory that blessed religious Brother Peter of Alcantara! The world, they say, is no longer capable of such high perfection; constitutions are weaker, and we are not now in the olden times. Here is a Saint of the present day; yet his manly fervor equalled that of past ages; and he...

Of Peter and the Papacy – A Homily for the 21st Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • August 26, 2017 • Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, Perugino, Sistine ChapelThe Gospel today sets forth the biblical basis for the Office of Peter, the Office of the Papacy, for Peter’s successors are the Popes. The word “pope” is simply an English version (via Anglo-Saxon and Germanic tongues) of the word “papa.” The Pope is affectionately called “Papa” in Italian and Spanish as an affectionate indication that he is the father of the family, the Church.Let’s look at...

Bones attributed to St. Peter have been found by chance in a church in Rome during routine restoration work, 2,000 years after the apostle’s death. The relics of the saint, who is regarded as the first Pope, were found in clay pots in the 1,000-year-old Church of Santa Maria in Cappella in the district of Trastevere, a medieval warren of cobbled lanes on the banks of the Tiber River. The bones were discovered when a worker lifted up a large marble slab near the medieval altar of the church, which has been closed to the public for 35 years because...

Christian tradition maintains that after Rome nearly burned to the ground, Nero engaged in a brutal crackdown on Christians which led to the executions of Peter and Paul. On the evening of July 18, in the scorching summer of 64 CE, a fire started in a shop under the Circus Maximus in Rome. The fire quickly spread to nearby homes and businesses and the Circus itself. The fire burned for six days, ravaging the city. It left only four of Rome’s fourteen quarters untouched. The reigning emperor, Nero, a man known for his cruelty and love of theater, scapegoated the...