Free Republic

For my non-Catholic readers you may find that title surprising, for some of my Catholic readers you may find it scandalous. However I suspect most of you will know exactly what it means. As you know by now, the Supreme Court of the United States of America in a 5-4 vote decided that two men or two women have the constitutional right to enter into a legal marriage. What a lie. What utter poppycock. As for the comments by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' President, you're a little late. You did this. You and your colleagues and your...

By, Naraj Warkioo – Detroit professor and legal adviser to the Vatican says Catholics who promote gay marriage should not try to receive holy Communion, a key part of Catholic identity. And the archbishop of Detroit, Allen Vigneron, told the Free Press Sunday that Catholics who receive Communion while advocating gay marriage would “logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.” The comments of Vigneron and Edward Peters, who teaches Catholic canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, are part of a polarizing discussion about gay marriage that echoes debate over whether politicians who advocate...

Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now.No, the sky is not falling — not yet, anyway — but with the Supreme Court ruling constitutionalizing same-sex marriage, the ground under our feet has shifted tectonically. It is hard to overstate the significance of the Obergefell decision — and the seriousness of the challenges it presents to orthodox Christians and other social conservatives. Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now. Discerning the meaning of the present moment requires sobriety, precisely because its radicalism requires of conservatives...

Our nation, which was founded on the Laws of Nature and Nature's God has now fully apostatized and our doom is sure with the "Supreme" Court's legalization of sodomy marriage. O godless judges, leaders and nation, will you overthrow the Almighty and His ETERNAL absolutes of RIGHTEOUSNESS and design? O godless dreamers, are not your days but as a smoking flax and at the end of your vanity will you not give an account to the ETERNAL SUPREME JUDGE and CREATOR of the earth and ETERNITY (Acts 17:30-31, Phil 2:9-11, Rev. 20:11-15)! No nation has ever survived the embrace of...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex “marriage” is a constitutional right, in a long-awaited decision that will have sweeping and unpredictable consequences for U.S. jurisprudence, cultural norms and religious freedom. Catholic leaders, legal scholars and marriage experts reacted with dismay to the landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and three related cases. But they also expressed resolve that the decision would not discourage their efforts to preach and teach the truth about marriage and to advance respect for the institution as a union of one man and one woman committed to the care and education of...

As everyone knows, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled gay marriage is a constitutionally protected right.Christians around the country have already lost jobs and businesses because they believe in traditional, one-man one-woman marriage, and many fear that this ruling will lead to more persecution.That may be so. But even if that does happen, it won’t be the worst result of our country’s acceptance of gay marriage.The worst outcome of our country’s acceptance of gay marriage will be the loss of souls to hell.Homosexual acts are gravely sinful. The approval of homosexual acts is gravely sinful. This court decision further entrenches...

Canonist Ed Peters has comments on SCOTUS decision today.  Read the whole thing over there, but… here: Two thoughts re the Supreme Court decision on ‘same-sex marriage’[..]Of course, the Court has not yet reached the end of its marriage line, for yet to come are “marriages” between siblings, parents and children, groups of people, and so on, but come they will, [….]Anyway, I make here two points especially for Catholics.First, we need to recall that the State has long recognized as married some persons who are not married, namely, when the State allows divorced persons simply to remarry. We have lived...

“The joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the women and men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ” ("Gaudium et Spes," no. 1). With this now-famous line, the Second Vatican Council opened its “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” (1965). This passage immediately came to mind this morning as I heard of the U. S. Supreme Court decision (Obergefell v. Hodges) that upheld the constitutional right to same-sex marriage. My personal response was...

June 25, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Following a declaration by the Mexican Supreme Court nullifying state laws prohibiting “marriage” to people of the same sex, Nuevo Laredo Bishop Gustavo Rodríguez Vega has issued his own declaration along with the clergy of his diocese, assuring the faithful that he will suffer imprisonment rather than cooperate with such unions. “They can’t require an institution like this Church to go against its principles,” the archdiocesan clergy are quoted as saying in various local and national news reports. “Let the Supreme Court send the bishops and the priests to jail, whomever they want, but the...

With same-sex marriage declared constitutional in all 50 states, some Supreme Court justices worry that religious freedom will face unprecedented challenges in coming years. In his dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Today’s decision, for example, creates serious questions about religious liberty. Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is — unlike the right imagined by the majority — actually spelled out in the Constitution.”In his decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that those who object to same-sex marriage because of religious beliefs still enjoy constitutional rights to “advocate”...

Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the environment made an impact on UN negotiations this week. But in the rush to emphasize its input on climate change, his forceful condemnation of abortion and population control remain overlooked. At this week’s negotiations on sustainable development in the General Assembly, María Emma Mejía Vélez, ambassador of Colombia said the Pope’s encyclical on “climate change” was relevant to the UN development agenda. The new papal encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si,” has been described as a “massive coup” for those who emphasize the human causes of climate change. It has lent the moral backing...

Societies across the globe are engaged in conversations to redefine marriage. Media debates, election-day balloting, and governmental court rulings have provided the platform for this redefinition. We believe a biblical view of marriage involves a monogamous, covenantal relationship between a man and a woman. Jesus said, “At the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one...

Jesus died so that heterosexual and homosexual sinners might be saved. Jesus created sexuality, and has a clear will for how it is to be experienced in holiness and joy. His will is that a man might leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and that the two become one flesh (Mark 10:6–9). In this union, sexuality finds its God-appointed meaning, whether in personal-physical unification, symbolic representation, sensual jubilation, or fruitful procreation. For those who have forsaken God’s path of sexual fulfillment, and walked into homosexual intercourse or heterosexual extramarital fornication or adultery, Jesus offers astonishing mercy....

Our Lady of Good Success Date: very early 17th c., first approved 1611 Place: Quito, Ecuador Visionary: Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesus TorresThe story of Our Lady of Good Success is a most fascinating one -- and incredibly important and timely, as many of the prophecies of our Lady and our Lord given to Mariana pertain explicitly to the 20th c. and thereafter. Mother Mariana was a Spanish Conceptionist nun, blessed with the charismata of discernment and prophecy, who ran a convent in Quito, Ecuador. First, Our Lady told her to make a life-sized statue of her holding the...

Hi I don't post on here much anymore but in the wake of this decision I thought I might as well. Civil partnership is not a religious marriage, and a religious marriage is not a civil contract. They are not, and never EVER should've been, merged and confused in the first place. Half the mess the world is in now, and the reason marriage is so under threat, is because even on the freedom loving Christian right of politics, too many people don't seem to grasp that ANY regulation of marriage at ANY level (states or federal) is an intrusion...

Persecution is coming — and it's been abetted by traitorous Catholics The High Court voted in a sweeping broad-based decision that sodomite marriage is a constitutional right. The vote went as largely expected in a 5–4 ruling where Catholic Justice Anthony Kennedy, a long time ally for homosexual rights, equated the struggle for sodomite marriage to the civil rights battle for blacks in the 1960s. In a giant step going even further, Kennedy also addressed the issue of the children of homosexual couples, saying they had a right not to be humiliated by their parents not being legally recognized as...

Maybe I should be upset and disheartened at today's Supreme Court decision. But I'm smiling. And I don't feel sad. I feel strangely excited. I remember the night that Obama was elected for his second term. I went to bed early, sick to my stomach, depressed and afraid. It was truly awful. I felt a dark shroud had descended on our nation, the America that I love so much. But I have grown and changed. The ins and outs of politics and courts and men do not bother me so much anymore. And in this case, I find myself untroubled....

“There is no true liberty except the liberty of the happy who cleave to the eternal law.” — St. Augustine, On Freewill “Conservative commentator, and Blaze contributor, S.E. Cupp broke down on-air Friday after the Supreme Court decided in favor of same-sex marriage. Cupp was overjoyed, and said Republicans have to accept gay marriage or risk becoming 'relics.'” — The Blaze, June 26, 2015 I. The great division in modern politics, argued Russell Kirk in The Politics of Prudence, “is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; instead, it lies between all...

Texas Senator and Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz said 2 Supreme Court rulings were so wrong they constitute one of the “darkest periods” in US history. I can not even begin to understand the blinders you’d need to wear to make such a callous statement as this. Slavery. Lynchings. Trail of Tears. Triangle shirtwaste factory. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. My Lai. Kent State. 9/11. Hurricane Katrina. When we first learned about Abu Ghrab. 115 migrants dead in the Texas borderlands in 2014. Even Charleston just last week. These were dark days folks. People dying is a dark day. People dying because we killed...

Most were not surprised by the Supreme Court decision today. Court watchers who had attended the hearings earlier this year were rather certain that the mood of the court was to find a constitutional right to marriage and extend it to those with same-sex attraction.  I am not a lawyer and will not therefore speak to the legal demerits of this decision. Others, including the minority on the Court, can speak to that.  But as a citizen I wonder how we have come to a place in our legal and legislative system where unelected judges for life, who in...