Free Republic

Homosexual activists and advocates often state that they merely want recognition and certain legal rights, and that churches and other objectors to their life style remain free to have their opinions and state them in a free culture. And any expressed fears regarding compulsory recognition or punitive measures directed against objectors are dismissed as fear mongering.Never mind that these fears are based in real experiences in Canada and Europe where clergy have been arrested and fined for presenting the biblical case against homosexuality in the pulpits of their own churches or the pages of their bulletins.In the end we who...

� Why This Generation Doesn’t “Get” Hell… This Guy Understands… Take a few minutes and listen to this stirring speech by Rafael Cruz, the Father of Senator Ted Cruz. He speaks for the rapidly marginalized true America, which is unapologetically Christian. Whatever happens is up to God. I don’t see a political solution to our spiritual problem, but Truth is refreshing to hear, especially when passionately presented, Enjoy, and pray! Pastor Rafael Speaks

Pope Francis on Sunday urged Christians and Muslims to promote mutual respect , especially through the education of new generations. His remarks came at the end of his Angelus address when he sent greetings to Muslims throughout the world who have just celebrated the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Text from page http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/08/11/pope_francis_greets_muslims_and_urges_both_christians_and_muslims_to/en1-718872 of the Vatican Radio website

You are a homeless person. You are sick and you know it is bad. You stagger into the ER of St. Ipsidipsy Catholic Hospital in Tall Tree Circle. You have no insurance, health coverage, or money. You are seen by a doctor and treated.The Obama Administration then punishes the hospital for treating you, a person without government-approved obligatory Obamacare.From the Daily Caller: Obamacare installs new scrutiny, fines for charitable hospitals that treat uninsured peopleCharitable hospitals that treat uninsured Americans will be subjected to new levels of scrutiny of their nonprofit status and could face sizable new fines under Obamacare. A...

Events in one Syrian town cast light on the nation’s strifeIlyas was, he told me, the very last Christian to flee Qusayr. He had been one of just a handful in the town to join the revolution — an odd thing for a Christian to do because the Free Syrian Army (FSA) were and are mostly Sunnis, and the Christians mostly sided with Assad. Still, it didn’t save him. One day he heard banging on the door and saw men with Kalashnikovs standing there. There were familiar faces, some he had known for years. He said: ‘They told me: “You’re...

The culture wars are getting hotter. �Social issues� will remain key issues in the next couple election cycles in these USA, which will probably cause a couple train-wrecks for Catholics and for libertarians… and even for Catholic Tea Party members. On that point, the great Samuel Gregg has a new book coming out (pre-order HERE) which I am reading in an advance copy.So… we track back to priest and bishops being involved in politics. Whenever a priest or a bishop enunciates clearly and accurately a teaching of the Church which would bring any sound Catholic to shun certain candidates, those...

Switzerland announced a national competition this week that will search for a new national anthem to replace its current one, which government officials say has too many references to God and is too old-fashioned. "The real problem is above all the text," said Lukas Niederberger, who is part of the Swiss Society for Public Utility (SGG), the completion organizer in charge of looking for a new anthem. "Officially the anthem is a psalm, a prayer, but of course we have an open society, religiously neutral. We have atheists, no single god, so this anthem is a difficulty," he told BBC...

They work with the poorest of the poor. They've seen the effects of drugs, murder, violence, bombings and more in poverty-stricken communities in the U.S., England, Ireland, Nicaragua, and Honduras. They've experienced tough kids like those in the New York's infamous South Bronx.  But the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal had never encountered a hardness of heart like they found in the notroriously crime-ridden neighborhood of Moyross.  How do you reach out to those who are considered unreachable? Find out when EWTN airs "The Monks of Moyross," at 9 p.m. ET, Sunday, Aug. 11, with an encore 3 a.m., Monday,...

At the request of the pope, Catholics used to pray after Mass for the conversion of Russia–or so we have often heard. This custom has long since been discontinued. Whenever it comes to my mind, however, I wonder if it should be revived in a new form. Should Catholics today pray after Mass for the conversion of America? Or, if the Holy Father (for understandable reasons) would not want to single out the United States in this way, could the Bishops of the United States at least encourage their flocks to pray after Mass for the conversion of their country?...

Romania is in the middle of a church-building boom, with some 10 new places of worship completed every month, and one vast cathedral slowly taking shape. But some Romanians take issue with the expense, in one of Europe's poorest countries - and particularly the use of funds from the public purse. The church is restored, while a statue of Lenin is trampled underfoot (Mogosoaia Palace, 2009) To travel across the north of Romania from Suceava in Moldavia to Maramures is to be bamboozled by exquisite religious eye candy. Everywhere you look there are churches - big, small, medieval, brand new,...

A psychologist who advised the Catholic Church committee that deals with sexual abuse says the church's insurance company dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol. [SNIP] ...he was disturbed by how much influence Catholic Church Insurance had in formulating the church's protocol. "When I came into the process somewhere in 1996/97, CCI was at every meeting," he said. "They either had one or two of their senior representatives, and/or a lawyer at each of the meetings I attended. "They would object to any language that was used in the Towards Healing document that would put the...

Plans by three Catholic hospital systems in Wisconsin to deny admitting privileges to doctors who perform abortions would "be in active violation of federal law," Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen's Department of Justice said in a court filing last week. Federal law "provides that hospitals accepting federal funds may not discriminate against a physician because that physician has participated in or refused to participate in abortions," the state Justice Department said in its filing in federal court. According to experts on federal law, if doctors can prove they were not granted privileges specifically because they perform the procedure, the...

Uncovering Israel’s Past Posted By Christopher S. Carson On August 6, 2013 @ 12:12 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 34 Comments It seems that many educated liberals who wish Israel didn’t exist are turning to archaeologists to succor their agendas. These archaeologists are called biblical “minimalists,” and loosely affiliate themselves with the “Copenhagen School” of archaeology. They believe that the scientific evidence in the dirt is irrefutable—there was no Moses, there was no Exodus, there was no period of the “Judges,” there was not a Conquest of Caanan by Joshua or anyone else, and there was no glorious “United Monarchy”...

From National Catholic Reporter: Pope Francis has not mentioned traditional hot-button Catholic issues like abortion because he prefers to emphasize that Catholics “love people� and are not “mean or old-fashioned,� Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley has said.O’Malley, the only North American Francis asked to serve on a group of eight cardinals advising him on reforming the church, made the comments during a keynote address Tuesday in San Antonio at the annual convention of the Knights of Columbus.“Some people think that the Holy Father should talk more about abortion,� O’Malley told approximately 2,000 attendees, according to a copy of the remarks posted...

Moscow, August 7, Interfax – Delays in the process of suppressing terrorists in Syria can result in setting up an Islamic caliphate in the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes. "Earlier, we saw how some members of the Security Council didn’t want to condemn terrorist acts in Syria, saying, that, no matter how cynical it may sound, those who carry out these acts struggle against the regimen, which exhausted itself. This position is absolutely unacceptable, terrorism should be treated without any double standards," he said at a press conference summing up his talks with Ghana Foreign Minister Hannah Tetteh....

That didn’t take long. Salon magazine this morning is extolling the virtues of multi-spouse marriages.Same-sex “marriage” proponents have always scoffed at the idea that redefining marriage would open the door for multi-spouse marriages. “My Two Husbands by Angi Becker Stevens, not only argues for “poly-amorous” unions but continues to scoff at the foolish “right wing” people who expected people to go there. Her article is novel only in that it also scoffs at the same-sex marriage definers who argued back that it wouldn’t.Stevens has been married for 16 years to her husband, and has now taken a boy\friend who she...

He was the bishop of Pyongyang. For more than sixty years he was considered "missing." But now the Holy See has made his death official, at the age of 106. To permit the opening of his cause of beatificationVATICAN CITY, August 5, 2013 - Twice a month the Vatican secretariat of state publishes modifications to the Annuario Pontificio for the current year. The booklet of last July 1 contains a curious piece of news on one of the most impenetrable countries of the globe, North Korea, which periodically makes international headlines with the threat of using nuclear weapons. The news...

The recent health care reforms of Barrack Obama is being associated with the mark of the beast 666 . A controversial section of the Health Care Reform act talked of ‘(ii) a class II device that is implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining’. One of the class (ii) devices is an implantable Verichip or RFID-Chip. Verichip is an inject-able identification chip that can be inserted under the skin of a human being to provide biometric verification. It is about the size of a grain of rice and holds an identification number, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data, and a tuning capacitor all...

WASHINGTON—Whenever I write sympathetically about religion, I get bombarded by tweets and notes from readers who normally agree with me but cannot abide the idea that religious belief should be seen as intellectually serious. And because I have written favorably about Pope Francis, I get more than my share of angry comments about the Catholic pedophilia scandal, which continues to haunt the church and troubles even its most loyal members. Getting lambasted doesn’t bother me. On the contrary, citizens talking back to the purveyors of opinion is a glorious aspect of free speech. But my correspondents underscore the existence of...

I think this analysis suggests a positive case, in the American context at least, for a papacy that simultaneously calls U.S. Catholics away from a too-close entanglement with the fortunes and platform of the Republican Party, and that consistently reminds non-Catholics and non-Christians that there is more to Christianity than the particular set of issues that have (understandably) kept many American believers in a right-of-center political orbit. This is, again, something that the last two popes did as well — but if Pope Francis’s public profile continues to come across as more “liberal” than theirs, it might actually play a...

The Pope is soft on Islam. "It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life." Encourages Homosexuality. "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs." [SNIP] He is overtly humble and does not embrace his office: "The authority of the pope is not unlimited;" "The cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard....

Engaging with the secular world has risks — but the potential for real rewards Pope Francis has lost none of his ability to surprise. On his seven-day journey to Rio he eschewed traditional security protocols (which allowed a crowd to mob his traffic-trapped mini-Popemobile), wandered into Rio’s slums, accepted drinks from strangers on the street, and just for the fun of it added a meeting with young people to an already packed schedule. At the impromptu July 25 meeting, in the Cathedral of San Sebastian, Francis delivered off-the-cuff remarks that capture not only his wish for the young, but the...

The death of Trayvon Martin is a tragedy - an unnecessary tragedy. That the trial brought forward the reality that his death was caused by his own violent actions does not make it any less tragic - and unnecessary. To make matters infinitely worse, his death has escalated the polarization of our nation along racial and ideological lines. Some are using what they perceive as injustice to excuse their own commitment to injustice and general lawlessness - including high ranking officials in the federal government. Yet Christians and others committed to peace and a healthy culture have an opportunity to...

Nehemiah 9:5 Stand Up and Praise the Lord Your God Forever and Ever, And Let them Praise Thy Glorious Name, O God, Which Excelleth Above All Thanksgiving and Praise.

If Army chaplain Emil Kapaun served in Afghanistan today rather than Korea six decades ago, President Obama would probably give the Catholic priest discharge papers instead of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A Catholic high school teacher said he was fired for marrying his gay partner soon after same-sex matrimony was made legal in California, prompting a Web-based push to see him reinstated. The petition drive in support of English instructor Ken Bencomo on the online petition platform Change.org has gathered over 9,000 signatures from his former students and people as far away as Spain since it was launched earlier this week. The teacher and his partner were among a wave of same-sex couples who married after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June cleared the way for gay weddings to resume...

Vladimir Putin has urged the world’s political leaders to stop the violent persecutions against Christians that have erupted in many Middle Eastern countries. Speaking at a meeting with Orthodox Christian leaders in Moscow last week, the Russian President said he noted “with alarm” that “in many of the world’s regions, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa inter-confessional tensions are mounting, and the rights of religious minorities are infringed, including Christians and Orthodox Christians.” “This pressing problem should be a subject of close attention for the entire international community,” Putin said. “It is especially important today to make...

From his website "Coming August 26: Exodus A dark stranger arrives in the middle of the night ripping open a centuries old wound in post-apocalyptic Harpers Ferry. Religious zealots have risen from the south conquering all that stands before them. Now Jason must help his fellow villagers escape to a land far away to preserve their culture and buy enough time to build a defense. Can they succeed without any technology in the face of a rugged American continent? Blogger and author Geoff Livingston confronts America’s worst fears with a world destroyed by technology and dominated by Christian fundamentalism. Don’t...

In his book Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky states “Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.� p.126Saul Alinsky’s 13 “power tactics� are inconsistent with Catholic teaching and prove to be anti-Catholic as you will see below. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and current community organizers have followed and do...

Isaiah 40:11 He Tends His Flock like a Shepherd: He Gathers the Lambs in His Arms, And Carries them Close to His Heart.

Chicago politicians this past weekend asked Cardinal Francis George not to pull funding from immigration campaign groups who support legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Groups that potentially could lose funding of between US$25,000 and US$30,000 a year include organizations affiliated with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Latino Union, Resurrection Project, United African Organization, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Albany Park Neighborhood Council, ARISE Chicago, Chicago Workers Collaborative, Interfaith Leadership Project and Most Blessed Trinity. The funding for these organizations comes from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which requires fund recipients to be compliant with Roman Catholic teachings....

BACKGROUND by Dangus: The Brazilian constitution guarantees the right to life, starting from conception. However, the Brazilian Supreme Court has ruled that such protection applies only to those babies destined to be born. Therefore, it has allowed the destruction of frozen embryos and anencephaletic babies, which it claims cannot be born, anyway. The court did this in defiance of opinion polls which show 80% of Brazilians oppose the liberalization of abortion. The court's strategy is clear: chip away at the notion of personhood, to move that majority towards the death camp. Senators, including chief allies of the President, have introduced...

It's hardly surprising that the world, especially Roman Catholics like myself, is breathlessly decoding what Pope Francis told reporters on his flight back to Rome from Brazil on Monday regarding homosexuality: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” The Pope’s remarks... hardly represent a break with Catholic church doctrine, which still condemns homosexuality. The Vatican’s catechismal stance regarding the LGBTs in our midst remains the same: The church may love the sinner, but it hates the sin. And since Francis was referring specifically to gay priests—who like other...

WASHINGTON – A representative of the Cuban Catholic Church explained at an event Monday that presently the Catholic Church is exerting a growing influence in the country. Orlando Márquez Hidalgo, editor and director of the Havana Archdiocese publication Palabra Nueva (or New Word), explained to The Christian Post after a panel discussion event held by the Brookings Institute that there is "open dialogue" between the Church and President Raúl Castro. "There is an open dialogue, there is not a road map, there is an open dialogue where everything can be included," said Márquez. "They talked about the situation in Cuba...

Following the legalisation of same-sex marriage Catholics are in an alien land with unfamiliar language and customs, the Bishop of Portsmouth has said. In a statement released by his diocese, Bishop Philip Egan said that with the greater use of contraception, the unitive and procreative aspects of sexual intercourse have become separated, leading to pleasure without responsibility and widespread sex outside marriage. Bishop Egan said: “As Catholics, like Israel in Egypt, we now find ourselves in an alien land that speaks a foreign language with unfamiliar customs. For what we mean by matrimony, sexual intercourse and family life is no...

Kiev, July 27, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church Synod has called on the authorities of Kievan Rus countries to mark anniversaries of Kievan Rus' Christianization as state holidays or even make them days off. "Bearing in mind the exclusive importance of Kievan Rus' Christianization for the history of countries within the area of canonical responsibility of the Russian Orthodox Church, to appeal to the administrations of the countries, which have not made this decision, for making anniversaries of Kievan Rus' Christianization state holidays and, wherever that is possible, days off," says a resolution of the Synod, which convened in...

If President Eisenhower were alive today, the five-star general may be shocked to know that his own speeches are too offensive to be quoted in the military he used to command. A military chaplain has been taken to task for fulfilling the job description that most spiritual leaders (until recently) were hired to do: talk about faith. In a harmless post for his online website, "Chaplain's Corner," Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes (USAF) of the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska wrote an inspirational piece called, "No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II." The phrase, which President Eisenhower...

Fort Collins Police are warning Catholic and Mormon churches in the area to be on alert after a threat from a "Islamic Jihadist." Police are looking for a white male in his 30s, approximately 6 feet tall and weighing 185 pounds, with brown hair, a full beard and green eyes, according to the Fort Collins Police Dept. He has threatened Catholic and Mormon churches saying "they would be destroyed."

Jul-29-2013 (1,030 words) With photos. xxxi Pope answers questions about Curia reforms, gay lobby By Cindy WoodenCatholic News Service ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM BRAZIL (CNS) -- Pope Francis said he was responding to the clear wishes of the College of Cardinals when he set up commissions to study the Vatican bank, Vatican financial and administrative procedures and the reform of the Roman Curia. The pope also said he knows people have spoken about some kind of "gay lobby" at the Vatican protecting certain priests by threatening to blackmail others. The pope said the "lobbying" is what is worrisome. Pope...

South Africa's Nobel peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he will never worship a "homophobic God" and will rather go to hell. The retired archbishop was speaking at the launch of a UN-backed campaign in South Africa to promote gay rights. Despite sex-same relationships being legal in South Africa, it had some of the worst cases of homophobic violence, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said. Archbishop Tutu, 81, is a long-standing campaigner for gay rights. 'Toilet brush attack' He retired as Archbishop of Cape Town in 1996, but has remained the moral conscience of the nation, correspondents say. Same-sex...

The Pope and Abortion in Brazil Brazilian president is about to enact pro-abortion law, and the pope does not know about it By Julio Severo A bill protecting victims of sexual violence was passed by stealth in the Brazilian Congress recently. There is no problem in laws protecting such victims. But pro-abortion groups praised it because it will effectively legalize abortion in Brazil. It will enforce another law that says that to get an abortion is enough for a woman to say that she was a victim of rape. There is no need of medical and legal evidence. Any...

MOSCOW, July 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday praised the role of Orthodox Christianity in the country’s history and congratulated the heads of the world’s Orthodox churches on the 1025th anniversary of the Christianization of Kievan Rus, a medieval state comprising parts of modern-day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. “The adoption of Christianity became a turning point in the fate of our fatherland, made it an inseparable part of the Christian civilization and helped it turn into one of the largest world powers,” Putin said in a message addressed to participants of a commemorative celebration on Red...

From Breitbart: MILITARY CENSORS CHRISTIAN CHAPLAIN, ATHEISTS CALL FOR PUNISHMENTA Christian chaplain in the military is being officially censored for engaging in free speech, and anti-Christian activists are demanding he be punished. Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes is a Christian chaplain currently serving in the U.S. Air Force. He is stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. As an ordained clergyman whose duties are to provide religious instruction and spiritual counseling, he has a page on the base’s website called “Chaplain’s Corner.”Reyes recently wrote an essay entitled, “No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II.” This common saying...

At the height of the contentious debate that surrounded health care reform in 2010, negotiations nearly ground to a halt due objections made by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) over abortion funding provisions in the legislation. The USCCB, which is considered quite liberal in the American sense of the word on the issues of health care and health insurance, refused to give its blessing to what would become ObamaCare due to the legislation's funding for elective abortions. At the time, ObamaCare appeared doomed. Many Democrats stated that they could not support a health care bill which didn't...

The Prime Minister spoke of his pride at legalising same sex marriage, just a year after explicitly giving a personal guarantee to do it by 2015 to a reception for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-sexual community at 10 Downing Street. Mr Cameron told guests at the same reception one year on that Britain was now “the best place to be gay, lesbian or transgender anywhere in Europe”. He added: “That is a great achievement. That’s not my measure; that is an internationally recognised measure. But there’s still a lot more work to be done.” Thanking the ministers and civil...

Moscow, July 25, Interfax - Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his concerns about what he sees as infringement on the rights of religious minorities, particularly Orthodox Christians, in the conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Africa. "I must note with alarm and pain that interdenominational tensions are growing and the rights of religious minorities, among them Christians, including Orthodox Christians, are infringed on in many regions of the world, especially in the Middle East and Northern Africa," Putin said at a meeting with the primates and representatives of local Orthodox Churches in Moscow on Thursday. "This pressing problem...

Full Title: Setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience: A Consideration of the Church’s Role in the Public Square In the Office of Readings today we read from 2 Corinthians 4 where St. Paul well describes the work of the Church in the Public square: Setting forth the truth plainly, we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God (2 Cor 4:2). Not a bad description of our posture and practice toward the secular world.Yet, that is not often the impression many take from our posture. In what I would called a...

Psalm 118:14 He is my Strength and Song in the Heat of Battle, And Now He has Given me the Victory.

In an unprecedented move, the Archdiocese of New York is trying to save six cash-strapped elementary schools by allowing an outside organization to run them. The Partnership for Inner-City Education — which has a history of working with city Catholic schools — is contracting with the archdiocese to manage the finances and oversee the academic curriculums of the schools in the Bronx and Harlem starting this fall. “We want to have full enrollment and sustainability for the very long term,” said Jill Kafka, executive director of the nonprofit. “We’re really looking to have these schools alive for a long time.”...