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Aid to the Church in Need say 5,000 Catholics have been killed in one diocese alone People gather around the ruins of the burned Bama Market in Maiduguri, Nigeria (CNS) A new report has revealed the scale of the suffering of Nigerian Catholics at the hands of Boko Haram militants, with 5,000 Catholics killed in one diocese alone.A further 100,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Maiduguri, in the northeast of the country, have been displaced by the six-year campaign of violence conducted by the Muslim militant group, according to the Situation Report on the Activities of Boko Haram in the...

Two conservative ex-Catholics have recently been in the news sharing their reasons for leaving. One was Michael Coren. Apparently, the Canadian broadcaster and author of Why Catholics Are Right stopped attending Mass a year ago —but only publicly mentioned his switch to Anglicanism for the first time last month. He told the National Post on May 2 that he left over the Church’s prohibition of gay sex. “I couldn’t look people in the eye and make the argument that is still so central to the Catholic Church, that same-sex attraction is acceptable but to act on it is sinful....

Catholic bishops called Monday for the federal government's immigrant detention system to be dismantled, and predicted Pope Francis would address the issue when he visits the U.S. this fall. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a sobering report that tens of thousands of immigrants are housed in prison-like conditions that cause psychological harm and are inhumane and ineffective. That includes a large number of moms and little kids, because of a growth in family detention after last summer's spike in migration from Central America....

Not many people, including Catholics, are aware of Raúl Castro's background. The brother of Fidel is in fact a sociopath who served as an executioner during the revolution as well as after his brother took power. Raúl was known for his ruthlessness and brutality. Years after the revolution, the homicidal maniac, who quite possibly is demon possessed, suggested that his nickname should be "Raúl the Terrible" for his role in hundreds of killings. He even executed a close friend, Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, on orders from Fidel in 1989. Cubans who dare to criticize the government or the policies of this...

Deuteronomy 33:26,27 There is None like unto the God of Jeshurun, Who Rideth upon the Heaven in thy Help, And in His Excellency on the Sky. The Eternal God is thy Refuge, and Underneath are the Everlasting Arms: And He shall Thrust Out the Enemy from before thee; and shall Say, Destroy them.

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Religious liberties were a hot topic at the Citizens United Freedom Summit Saturday, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal taking particular offense at a remark made by Hillary Clinton on the issue. Jindal wondered how Clinton could actually change an individual’s religious views saying, “And by the way the speech in this conference where she said those of us who are pro-life should need to have our religious beliefs changed. She didn’t say how. What does it mean? Re-education camps? She proposed to have our religious beliefs changed.” “You have to see her most recent comments on religious...

When Pope Benedict warned about “the Dictatorship of Relativism,” he meant it. Literally.This was hammered home not long ago when I was speaking to a group of students about the issue of same sex marriage. I prefaced the discussion with a description of relativism saying that this non-philosophy was now the mainstream, default setting in our society. “The way you can tell that relativism is mainstream,” I said, “is that there is no such thing as rational debate. In the absence of objective truth, there can be no debate, for a debate is dependent on the assumption that there...

The story of “Team Bergoglio” has been covered in detail by this blog from the beginning, but the story yet to be told, is that “Team Bergoglio” was and is a heretical plot to destroy the Church of Christ. The proof is found in nothing less than the words and deeds of its members, before, during and after the Conclave of 2013. Who’s who in “Team Bergoglio”? o-POPE-ROLLING-STONE-570“Team Bergoglio” is the name given by Dr. Austen Ivereigh to the group of Cardinals whom he says, in this book, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, conspired...

Cuban President Raul Castro has said he was so impressed by a Vatican audience with Pope Francis that he might return to the faith he was born into. Mr Castro praised the pontiff's wisdom, adding: "I will resume praying and turn to the Church again if the Pope continues in this vein." He thanked the Pope for brokering a rapprochement between Cuba and the US. The communist leader had stopped at the Vatican after attending Russia's World War Two Victory Day in Moscow. The Catholic Church has maintained ties with Havana since the 1959 revolution. The Pope will visit Cuba...

Why is this not front and center on CNN, as over-the-top abuse of free-speech? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBBmOTNzMI4

A Hungarian cardinal set to play a key role in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family suggested Thursday that no change will result from the summit, either on Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics or on broader matters such as contraception.Cardinal Péter Erdő said that talk of revisions on those fronts is the result of “a pressure with no foundation to change Church teaching.” Erdő was the relator — more or less the chairman — of last October’s synod, and will reprise his role this year. It’s an influential post, among other things giving him the chance...

MIAMI BEACH — Christians who have so far avoided controversial "culture war" issues will likely be pulled into those battles as their religious freedom becomes threatened due to gay marriage, Dr. John Inazu warned Monday. Theologically conservative Christian non-profit organizations, including churches, could face losing their tax exempt status or being shut down, and Christian doctors, lawyers, counselors and other professionals could be forced out of their professions, he explained. Inazu, associate professor of law and political science at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, was delivering a presentation, "Religious Liberty and the American Culture Wars," at the...

State Department apparently reverses course on controversial decision. The Iraqi nun who was denied entry to the United States because, apparently, the State Department feared she would illiciltly overstay her visa has finally been granted one. Dominican Sister Diana Momeka will be joining a delegation that includes Yazidi and Turkmen Shia in mid-May. Nina Shea, a religious freedom advocate with the Hudson Institute, confirmed to National Review that Sister Diana will receive a visa. The nun is expected to testify before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Nicholas Frankovich reported. Other details of her itinerary have not yet been set: Last week, American advocates...

Crosses in every room at Washingon D.C.’s Catholic University of America are a human rights violation that prevent Muslim students from praying. That’s the complaint to the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights filed by a professor from rival George Washington University across town. GWU Law School Professor John Banzhaf takes the Catholic institution to task for acting “probably with malice” against Muslim students in a 60-page complaint that cites “offensive” Catholic imagery all over the Catholic school, which he says hinder Muslims from praying. Baffled Catholic University officials say they have never received a complaint from any of the...

Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. • What's the worst thing Helaman Barlow did as a marshal of the polygamous towns here on the Utah-Arizona border? He knew men who took 16-year-old girls as plural wives. The marriages were sanctioned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so Barlow didn't report them. He looked up license plates for church security so they could track dissenters and their families. He obstructed the FBI when it came to town. When a church leader said he wanted another marshal demoted, Barlow watched for and reported a minor transgression made by...

Last week I delivered a guest lecture at a Christian liberal arts college entitled “Each Day Dies With Sleep: Literary and Theological Reflections upon Mortality.” As I thought through the topic over the previous weeks, two superficially disparate questions puzzled me. Why is it that the people most vocally committed to causes connected to death (abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia) are often the same who are committed to progressive sexual causes? And why do abortion advocates frequently see it not as a necessary evil but as a positive good? As to the first question, that the same people often, though not...

As part of the reforms prompted by Pope Francis, Germany's Roman Catholic Church has decided that lay Catholic employees who divorce and remarry or form gay civil unions should no longer automatically lose their jobs. According to Christian Today, Catholic Bishops have voted to adjust Church labour law "to the multiple changes in legal practice, legislation and society" so employee lifestyles should not affect their status in the country's many Catholic schools, hospitals and social services. It was gathered that the change came as the worldwide Catholic Church debates loosening its traditional rejection of remarriage after a divorce and of...

Vatican City, May 6, 2015 / 04:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- During a private audience on Tuesday, Pope Francis advanced the causes of canonization of 12 potential saints, two of whom were martyred by communist revolutionaries in Laos in 1960. The May 5 audience with Cardinal Angelo Amato also formally approved the canonization of Bl. Junipero Serra – which had already been scheduled for Sept. 23. The two martyrs recognized were the Servants of God Mario Borzaga and Paul Thoj Xyooj, who were killed in hatred of the faith in April 1960. Born in Italy in 1932, Fr. Borzaga joined the...

Statue in a Brittany town square deemed to violate the separation of Church and stateA French court has ordered the removal of a statue of St John Paul II which it said violated the separation of Church and state. Authorities have been given six months to remove a 29ft (8.7m) statue from the town square in Ploërmel, Brittany. The sculpture, by Russo-Georgian Zurab Tsereteli, shows the late pope praying underneath an arch topped by a cross. It was intended as a gesture of friendship from Russia to other countries with a Christian heritage. A court at Rennes said the problem...

This past weekend, noted progressive-Christian writer Rachel Held Evans published a widely shared and widely read piece in the Washington Post decrying the Evangelical church’s shallow attempts to appeal to Millennials by trying to make church “cool.” Ms. Evans critiques hashtag campaigns, young-adult groups with names like “Prime” and “Vertical,” and concert-style worship services. She mocks talk of “market share” and “branding,” and in so doing sounds every bit as traditionalist as those who despise the praise choruses of the typical Evangelical megachurch and long for the simple “old-time religion” of their grandparents.But that’s not really her point. Evans...