Free Republic

1. Salmagundi is a type of salad that contains a little bit of everything. 2. I have added several more essays to the “The One About…” page, including the one about Sharia Finance, the one about Jesus and Guns and the one about Jesus Christ: Economist. I’ll try to get some more up today. 3. YES, I SAW THAT THE OBAMA REGIME is threatening to arrest any priest chaplain who says Mass. Obviously, every Catholic priest chaplain should IMMEDIATLY go offer the August and Unbloody Holy Sacrifice in the most public way possible every single day and then force the...

FULL TITLE - "Obama Eviscerates Troops’ 1st Amendment Rights: Threatens Catholic Priests With Arrest If They Minister To Them" Unreal. He’s a monster. The Catholic priests need to come out and challenge this. It’s not enough that Obama is strategically punishing each and every American civilian, he’s going after our troops, too. Obama took the time to make sure Camp David stays open during the shutdown and he had time to pose for a portrait on the third day of the shutdown. Meanwhile, Sunday is near and the military has no priests to perform Sunday service or hear confessions. In...

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown. “With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.” According to its website,...

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown. “With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.”

MOSCOW, September 27 (RIA Novosti) – A group of Russian Orthodox priests will undergo military training at a Defense Ministry university in Moscow, the Russian army said Friday. The clergymen will undergo a month-long course in military history, war tactics and military regulations of the Russian Armed Forces, as well as how to provide psychological and emotional support to troops, according to a statement by the Central Military District. The statement did not say when the training would take place. The number of chaplains in the Russian Armed Forces has almost tripled in the past two years and currently stands...

WASHINGTON (RNS) After decades of glum trends — fewer priests, fewer parishes — the Catholic Church in the United States has a new statistic to cheer: More men are now enrolled in graduate level seminaries, the main pipeline to the priesthood, than in nearly two decades.This year’s tally of 3,694 graduate theology students represents a 16 percent increase since 1995 and a 10 percent jump since 2005, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).Seminary directors cite more encouragement from bishops and parishes, the draw of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the social-justice-minded Pope Francis, and...

Last week, the newly appointed Vatican Secretary of State made news when, in answer to a question about the Church's ancient practice of priestly (and episcopal) celibacy, acknowledged that this was not a dogma, and it was certainly possible to discuss a change in this discipline. The news media predictably made much of this; and for a lot of folks, this seemed to be something new. Well...it's not. I think, if you were to do an Internet search, you'd find that similar comments have been made by someone "high up" in the Church during the reign of the last three...

It is a common notion that the number of priests has plummeted in this country. Many speak of the halcyon days when there were four and five priests per parish, and the seminaries were packed. And while some of these memories are accurate, they are drawn from a time in this country that was very brief.The fact is, the number of priests per parish spiked sharply after 1950 and has now leveled back to the levels of 1950 and before.Note the graph at the upper right from the Center for Research in the Apostolate (CARA). It depicts the number of...

The MSM-e, hollywood, activist atheists, activists within the Roman Catholic Church (RCC),etc, have been, and are pushing really hard for the Roman Catholic Church to change its stance on not allowing females to serve as priests. I don't see these same usual suspects pushing for greater "inclusiveness," i.e., pushing for Sunni, Shiite, or Sufi Islam to allow female Imams or pushing for female Rabbis within Orthodox Judaism, or even other branches of the same.

Since becoming the head guy in The Vatican (www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm), Pope Francis has pulled a bigger beach crowd than the Rolling Stones (www.rollingstones.com), walked through slums, and washed and kissed the feet of prisoners. He even slummed it on his flight out of Rio by talking with reporters covering his trip, but he didn’t wash or kiss their feet. And even though he came out and said it is not his place to judge a gay person who accepts the Lord and has goodwill, there are plenty of women who think he should have said something for the ladies in the...

Published on Jun 27, 2013Disturbing news from the Vatican - stay tuned for more details.

Italian investigators have opened an inquiry into claims by a convicted paedophile priest that an underage prostitution ring has been operating inside the Holy Roman Church with clergymen hiring rentboys for sex inside churches. Don Patrizio Poggi, 46, told Italian authorities that a former Carabinieri pimped boys for nine clergymen. Poggi, who served a five-year sentence for abusing teenage boys while he was a parish priest at the San Filippo Neri church in Rome, said he made the allegations to "protect the Holy Church and the Christian community." The boys were chosen because they were starving and desperate, he claimed,...

The average age of men in the USA ordained to the priesthood in 2013 is 32; (on average over the past six years seminarians have been getting slightly younger) two-thirds are Caucasian, and 26 percent carry educational debt.These figures stand out in The Class of 2013: Survey of Ordinands to the Priesthood, the annual national survey of men being ordained priests for US dioceses and religious communities. The study was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a Georgetown University-based research center.The report is the 17th annual survey of ordinands commissioned by the Secretariat for Clergy,...

Vatican may prohibit female alter (sic) service By Michaels, Amanda Published: Tuesday, October 14, 2003Updated: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 11:09   Only nine years after the Vatican gave women permission to serve beside their male counterparts at the altar, a new proposal threatens to force them back into the crowd. On Sept. 23, the Italian Catholic monthly, "Jesus," released advanced text of an article featuring excerpts from a draft document, or directive, written by the Vatican congregations for Divine Worship and the Sacraments and for the Doctrine of the Faith. Distributed on June 5, the document was an expansion on the papal...

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Graham tells me something that I hadn’t heard about Boston Marathon bombing. As dozens of victims were sprawled across Boylston Street, many of them in danger of death, Catholic priests came running to the scene—and were turned away. Doctors and nurses were welcome at the bombing scene. Firefighters and police officers were welcome. But Catholic priests, who might have offered the solace of the sacraments, were not. ”Catholics need not apply.” That slogan was familiar in Boston years ago, before Irish and Italian immigrants took over control of the city. Now, after decades...

New York City, N.Y., Apr 24, 2013 / 04:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York will receive the 2013 William Wilberforce Award this weekend from a group of Christians for his leadership in standing up for religious freedom. “I resonate with Cardinal Dolan as much as any public religious leader in our country today,” Dr. Timothy George, chairman of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview which is bestowing the award, told CNA April 16. “Cardinal Dolan has just been tremendous, he's one of the major leaders not just of the Catholic Church in the United...

BRUSSELS, April 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an astonshing display of gentleness in the face of a vile attack, the head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, remained calmly seated with eyes closed in prayer Tuesday as four topless women attacked him with shouts and curses and doused him with water.  It’s not the first time the bishop has been attacked for standing up for the Church’s teachings on homosexuality and expressing his concern for those who live the homosexual lifestyle. The incident took place at the ULB University in Brussels where the archbishop was participating...

Religious liberty groups are mobilizing to defend the chaplain of George Washington University’s Newman Center after gay students launched an effort to have the priest fired because he preaches against homosexuality and abortion. “It’s discrimination against Catholics,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society. “Secular colleges are fast becoming a very unsafe place for Catholics who hold true to their faith. This is a very, very sad situation.” Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen said they want the university’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion to investigate the priest and they are calling for the student government association to defund...

Cardinal Peter Turkson made the comments to an American journalist He said similar sex scandals would not happen in African churches Cardinal Turkson is second favourite to take over as PopeThe African cardinal widely tipped to be the first black pope in modern history faced a firestorm of criticism last night after he laid the blame for clerical sex abuse crises at the feet of gay priests. Cardinal Peter Turkson, who comes from Ghana, told an American journalist that similar sex scandals would never convulse churches in Africa because the culture was inimical to homosexuality. ‘African traditional systems kind of...

Lynn is serving 3 to 6 years in state prison after a Common Pleas Court jury found him guilty of endangering children when he was secretary for clergy under Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua. Lynn, who managed archdiocesan priests assignments, let one remain in active ministry at a Northeast Philadelphia parish in the 1990s despite concluding that he had once abused a minor. That priest, Edward Avery, later sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy