Free Republic

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI lamented the serious lack of public programs and measures to address the needs of deaf people and a lack of even basic health care, which often can prevent hearing impairment. He spoke Nov. 20 to some 400 people attending a Vatican conference addressing the role of the deaf in the church. A handful of interpreters signed the pope's words to deaf participants during the audience in the Clementine Hall of the papal palace. The Nov. 19-21conference was organized by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry and was dedicated to "The Deaf Person...

Cardinal Vinko Puljic, Archbishop of Sarajevo and President of the Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina denied press reports yesterday which claim that the Vatican is creating a commission to investigate the alleged apparitions of Medjugorje. The cardinal, who is visiting Rome to attend the plenary session of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, of which he is a member, said that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is neither preparing a document nor establishing a special commission to study the Medjugorje apparitions. Cardinal Puljic said that the official position of the bishops of Bosnia and Herzegovina...

In 2005 estimates showed there were about 100 married priests in the U.S. Married priests are quite rare due to long standing Church rule. In mid October 2009, the Vatican announced a new process which will enable Anglican pastors to become Catholic priests, even if they are married. The Anglican rites in recent years has allowed lesbian woman and openly gay clergy to enter its fold as pastors in their churches. The Anglican Church is also giving their blessings to homosexual partnerships. These controversies has stirred up a great deal of opposition from some of it's own Anglican pastors.

Slaves of Christ November 20, 2009  "But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." (Romans 6:22)  There are several words translated "servants" in the New Testament, but the most common is doulos, as in our text, and its actual meaning is "bondservants," or "slaves." Its root meaning is to tie or bind and was commonly applied to the slaves in the Roman empire at the time of Christ.   The apostle Paul had reminded the Roman Christians that they were the slaves of sin...

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Examine Yourself Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. --Psalm 139:23-24 The philosopher Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." If a common philosopher could think that, how much more we Christians ought to listen to the Holy Spirit when He says, "Examine yourself." An unexamined Christian lies like an unattended garden. Let your garden go unattended for a few months, and you will not have roses and tomatoes but...

Ever since Sarah Palin entered the national political arena last summer as the Republican VP nominee, she has caused sheer panic in the hearts and minds of the Leftist Liberals in America. Accordingly, the Leftist media is hell-bent on doing all they can to discredit Palin’s accomplishments and destroy her character at any cost. Even now, much effort and energy is being expended to deceive the American people regarding her considerable achievements. Her popularity among conservatives is astounding, and many believe that she will get the 2012 endorsement for the presidency. The Left and its State-Run Media Minions are now...

HINSDALE, Ill. — Sister Donna Quinn referred to herself as a “peacekeeper” when she escorted women into a Chicago-area abortion business to shield them from pro-life advocates.But leaders of her Sinsinawa Dominican community, saying they fully support Church teaching on abortion, have told her that her actions violated her profession as a religious sister. Now, Sister Donna may be facing further discipline as the bishops of Madison, Wis., and Joliet, Ill., and the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, consider whether she formally cooperated with abortions by volunteering at the business. Under canon law, the penalty for formal cooperation with...

A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the "death certificate" imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the crucified Jesus. Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, said "I think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth." She said that she had reconstructed it from fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing imprinted on the cloth together with the image of the crucified man. The shroud, which is kept in the...

ROME – A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth. The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery. Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud. She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin...

Fr Daniil Sysoyev, rector of the parish of the Holy Apostle Thomas in Kantemirovskaya, Candidate of Theology (a Kandidat (Candidate) degree is equivalent to a PhD, somewhat more rigorous: editor’s note) I think that one of the most important problems facing the Orthodox Church in Russia, and even beyond its borders, is the ideological rigor mortis of the Church. The Church is considered as a kind of dead body, it is thought to be frozen. According to some, nothing should be changed in it. It is understandable that we should not change dogmatics and Church Tradition, no one argues with...

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image.... While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including...

Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O LORD, And teach out of Your law, that You may give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit is dug for the wicked. For the LORD will not cast off His people, nor will He forsake His inheritance. But judgment will return to righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it. (Psalm 94:12-15).

Minneapolis, Minn., Nov 20, 2009 / 03:54 am (CNA).- Following the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to allow sexually active homosexual clergy, an objecting Lutheran group has begun to form a new church body for those Lutherans who want to “remain faithful to the Orthodox Christianity of the last 2,000 years.”Lutheran CORE leaders on Wednesday said their working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the new denomination. They hope to launch the denomination by next August.Rev. Paull Spring, a retired Pennsylvania ELCA bishop and chairman of Lutheran CORE said...

The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday made his most outspoken challenge to the Roman Catholic Church since the Pope invited disaffected Anglicans to switch to Rome. Speaking before he meets Benedict XVI tomorrow, Dr Rowan Williams told a conference in Rome that the Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women was a bar to Christian unity. “For many Anglicans, not ordaining women has a possible unwelcome implication about the difference between baptised men and baptised women,” he said. The Anglican provinces that ordain women had retained rather than lost their Catholic holiness and sacramentalism, he said. Addressing an ecumenical conference at the...

The Holy Scriptures witness a single Second Coming and a single physical resurrection for the blessing of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked. This bodily resurrection is depicted in Rev 20:11-15 , "And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened ... The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done." It should be noted that the "first resurrection" mentioned in Rev 20:4-6 is the present blessed...

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), who was the leader of the Brethren movement and the “father of modern Dispensationalism,” took Margaret Macdonald’s new teaching on the rapture, made some changes (she taught a partial rapture of believers while he taught that all believers would be raptured) and incorporated it into his Dispensational understanding of Scripture and prophecy. Darby would spend the rest of his life speaking, writing and traveling, spreading the new rapture theory. The Plymouth Brethren openly admitted and were even proud of the fact that among their teachings were totally new ones which had never been taught by the...

Friday, November 13, 2009 Le Curé d'Ars Camille Dolard (1818- ?) Le Curé d'Ars sur son lit de mort (saint Jean-Marie Vianney, 1786-1859) Also entitled: Le Curé d'Ars, décédé le 4 août 1859, photographié d'après nature Taken 1859 pos. montées sur carton : papier albuminé : d'après nég. sur verre au collodion Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Saint Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney died on 4 August 1859 By 1855, the number of pilgrims who came to see him had reached twenty thousand a year. Vianney yearned for the contemplative life of a monk, and four times ran away from Ars, the last...

Lutherans Concerned / North America (LC/NA) responded with sadness to yesterday's announcement proposing a new church body to be formed by and for former ELCA members and congregations opposing the full inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life of the church. In August 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, by a 2/3 majority, passed a social statement on sexuality. The statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" described as faithful four positions on beliefs within the denomination on the inclusion of people in same-gender relationships. The four positions ranged from the view that same-gender...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A masked gunman entered a church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticizing Islam, prosecutors and church officials said Friday. The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country's growing Muslim minority of about 20 million. The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in St Thomas Church in southern Moscow Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire with a pistol, a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General's office...

I was so moved reading this last night. Ballad of the White Horse is Chesterton's poem about the English King Alfred, who fought the Danes in 878. "But it is also the story of Christianity battling against the destructive forces of nihilism and heathenism" (Alquist comments). The Blessed Virgin has appeared to King Alfred right before the battle; he queries her as to the outcome of the battle. "If he fail or if he win/ To no good man is told," she tells him. And continues: The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark,...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Unprecedented coalition of religious leaders call Americans to stand for sanctity of life, marriage, and religious freedom Washington D.C., Nov 20, 2009 / 06:21 am (CNA).- An unprecedented coalition of prominent Christian clergy, ministry leaders, and scholars has crafted a 4,700-word declaration addressing the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty. The declaration issues “a clarion call” to Christians to adhere to their convictions and informs civil authorities that the signers will not “under any circumstance” abandon their Christian consciences. The statement,  called “the Manhattan Declaration,” has been signed by more than 125 Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Orthodox...

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples. “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says. The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an...

Last Monday I was traveling to Tampa, Florida for a week long retreat with other Catholic priests who were once Anglican priests. In the airport I got an email with the news that the new Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus had been published. Suddenly the rest of the week’s program was decided. My brother priests and I spent time studying the document and discussing its implications. The wider implications of Pope Benedict’s invitation to Anglicans to come into full communion are genuinely historic. It impacts discussions not only with Anglicans, but with all of the churches derived from the Protestant Reformation....

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - November 20 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "0 Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." - Lamentations 3:58 Observe how positively the prophet speaks. He doth not say, "I hope, I trust, I sometimes think, that God hath pleaded the causes of my soul"; but he speaks of it as a matter of fact not to be disputed. "Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." Let us, by the aid of the gracious Comforter, shake off those doubts and fears which so much mar our peace and comfort. Be this our prayer, that we...

Living the Abundant Life Today's Scripture "The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)" (John 10:10, AMP) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria Too many people today have a barely-get-by mentality, "Barely able to pay my bills, got an okay job, an okay marriage." Friend, don’t settle there. Jesus came so we could live an abundant life! That means an abundance of joy, an abundance of peace, an abundance of health, an abundance in our...

The Forgiveness of God "In Him we have . . . the forgiveness of sins . . ." —Ephesians 1:7 Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us...

When Bill O’Reilly asked Sally Quinn questions regarding Sarah Palin’s faith on The Factor, Quinn was all over the answer board.

I was recently delighted to learn that Ave Maria University was the recipient of a Four Million dollar ($4,000,000.) gift from a man named Tom Golisano. The first words which came into my heart upon reading the news were from St. Paul, “Rejoice with those who rejoice…” (Romans 12:15) I am convinced that the most important work being done in this new missionary age is the preparation of the next generation of faithful, well educated young Catholic men and women, prepared to respond to the call to every Christian vocation and to participate in the mission of the Church. It...

Part 1: June Crain and Wright Field, 1942 - 1952 © 2009 by Linda Moulton Howe “He brought in ‘two little men (non-human).’ He called them ‘little green men.’ Then he described them as a ‘greenish-blue.’ And they were 4-feet-tall. And they were dead.”  - June Crain, Secretary, Air Material Command, Wright Field, Ohio, 1942-1952 November 19, 2009  Olympia, Washington - Recently in Las Vegas at Ryan Wood's UFO Crash Conference, a former police detective shared a tape recorded interview he did on June 27, 1997, with a 72-year-old woman who had worked as a secretary for the War...

In a powerful echo of the Biblical story of the patriarch Abraham, a Mumbai doctor smashed his father's idols and eventually decided to become a Jew in the Land of Israel. Dr. Aharon Abraham, left his position as Director of the ICU Medical Center at British Kennedy in Mumbai, India after terrorists murdered his spiritual guide and his wife, Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg one year ago. Abraham was born Vagirds Frads to a Hindu cleric who worshipped idols, and a mother who prepared food for them. As did the Biblical Abraham, young Vagirds could not understand how his father...

November 20, 2009                                        Friday of the Thirty-third Week                             in Ordinary Time     Reading 1Responsorial PsalmGospel Reading 11 Mc 4:36-37, 52-59 Judas and his brothers said,“Now that our enemies have been crushed,let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it.”So the whole army assembled, and went up to Mount Zion. Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month,that is, the month of Chislev,in the year one hundred and forty-eight,they arose and offered sacrifice according to the lawon the new altar of burnt offerings that they had made....

Part Three:  The Will of God Seventh and Tenth Commandments Table of Contents     The biblical precept of the Seventh Commandment, like the Sixth, is a short imperative, “You shall not steal.” It is the same in both versions of the Decalogue. The Tenth Commandment, as already seen, is that part of the Ten Commandments which forbids coveting what belongs to someone else, whether his house, servant, ox, donkey, or anything else. Deuteronomy distinguishes between coveting “your neighbor’s wife,” and “setting your heart” on other possessions, including the neighbor’s field (Exodus 20:15; Deuteronomy 5:19). Like the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, the...

The Vatican has just completed a five day conference on astrobiology where scientists convened to discuss the detection and implications of extraterrestrial life. A major driving force behind the conference was the Director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes. In May 2008, Funes gave an interview to the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper saying that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials posed no problems to Catholic theology. The conference itself was officially convened by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, chaired by its religious leader Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, and was held on private Vatican grounds from...

The use of Latin 1392. Why, in all ceremonies and sermons, do Priests speak in Latin? In the Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb 5:1, you will find these words, "Every Priest is ordained for men in the things that pertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and Sacrifices for sins." A Priest has two chief duties: to offer sacrifice to God, and to sanctify men by his teaching and instruction. Now, when a Priest is speaking, not to men, but to God in the name of men, he speaks in the language of the Church — in Latin...

The 15-year-old daughter of well-known Egyptian convert Maher el-Gohary has written a letter appealing to President Obama to help her father who is in danger of being murdered or imprisoned for becoming a Christian. Dina el-Gohary, who also converted from Islam to Christianity, has been on the run and living in hiding with her father, who is the second Egyptian to legally request to change his religious status. In her handwritten letter in Arabic, posted on Coptic Web sites, she writes: “Mr. President Obama, we are a minority in Egypt. We are treated very badly. You said that the Muslim...

There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior motive' .. She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers...

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. -- Romans 5:1-2a November 19, 2009 Sisters and brothers in Christ of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I greet you with the words of the apostle Paul to the Romans: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand" (Romans 5:1-2a). Where does the Evangelical Lutheran Church in...

Hosanna! Lutheran, the Lakeville mega-church that made headlines this month with its pending decision to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, isn’t alone. Community of Hope in Rosemount, which was launched in 2002 by four local congregations, ended its ELCA affiliation on Nov. 1. According to the St. Paul Area Synod of the ELCA, those were the only of its churches to pull out as of Nov. 12. But the action that preceded the defections – the ELCA’s August decision to allow ordination of gay clergy people living in committed relationships – continues to stir debate. “Our church is...

Horrified by the deadly shooting at a Tel Aviv gay and lesbian center in August, Robert Goldstein felt compelled to do something.A Jew helping his fellow Jews?Don’t be fooled by his name. Goldstein serves as pastor of St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco. His church recently donated $2,000 to the Jerusalem Open House, one of Israel’s leading LGBT organizations. He says a similar donation to the Israel Gay Youth Organization, the target of the attack, will follow.The impetus for the gifts came after Goldstein, 65, and some of his congregants visited Israel on a 2008 tour sponsored by the...

The Gates of Hell November 19, 2009  "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)  Many take this verse to teach security, that although Satan and his henchmen are attacking, the church and the Christian are safe within their fortress. In fact, many commentators and translators understand "gates" metaphorically, feeling that since gates are strong and important, they can be viewed as synonymous with "power," implying that the "power of hell" is marshaled against the church....

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: No Private Sin Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.... --1 Corinthians 5:6-7 No sin is private. It may be secret but it is not private. It is a great error to hold, as some do, that each man's conduct is his own business unless his acts infringe on the rights of others. "My liberty ends where yours begins," is true, but that is not all the truth....

Neither did I. And that's why this article in today's Daily Mail online caught my eye and raised my eyebrows. This insidious effort on the part of the Nazis to superimpose their own atheistic symbols and thought categories onto Christendom's ancient Christian symbols associated with the celebration of the Nativity of Christ was ultimately a failure, mainly because the Nazis were beaten by the Allies before this program of "re-education" could gain traction and take effect. But it is a good reminder that one of Hitler's prime directives was to do everything in his power to neutralize the Catholic Church,...

The White House has a curse upon it. It is real. It is powerful. It will not go away until a particular act takes place. The curse came upon the White when President George W. Bush placed the Koran with great aplomb in the White House library.

This is a video. Go to the site to view.

The archbishop of Canterbury today pleaded with Roman Catholics to set aside their differences with Anglicans over the issue of female bishops, insisting there was more uniting the denominations than dividing them. Rowan Williams was giving a lecture in Rome before Sunday's meeting with the pope, their first encounter since the Vatican's surprise announcement of a special institution for traditionalist Anglicans wanting to convert to Catholicism. In his address at the Gregorian University, Williams said the Anglican communion was proof that churches could stay together in spite of their differences. The communion has teetered on the edge of schism for...

” Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

ELCA Council Approves Charter, Hears Secretary's Report, Elects Leaders 09-263-JB CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) approved a charter for a comprehensive study of the ELCA and its future mission. A task force will conduct the study with the goal of bringing a report with recommendations to the 2011 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Orlando. The council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the church between churchwide assemblies. It met here Nov. 13-15. The project, "Living into the Future Together: Renewing the Ecology of the Evangelical...

Setting the Record Straight on Rapture By Holly Deyo The purpose of the following material is not to debate the existence of Rapture or when that event would occur, as it is to establish that this is a doctrine of long-standing. A well-circulated notion says that John Darby was the first to begin teaching Rapture in 1828. This may be an effort to discredit Rapture, to remove people's hope and dispirit them, or it may be perpetuated through ignorance. Whatever is the case, it is simply incorrect. Consider that while the word "rapture" was not used until Jerome in 400...

TERRE HAUTE — A sign at a Terre Haute church bearing a message that many people would deem “intolerant� has raised an objection from a concerned teenager who could not let the message go unchallenged. Saagarika Coleman submitted a letter to the editor of the Tribune-Star (see page A8) stating that she was “hit with a wave of shock. I was horrified� when she saw the sign at Bible Baptist Church as her father drove her to school Monday morning. The sign stated, “Jesus died and rose and lives for you. What did Allah do.� To Coleman and others, the...

With its annual collection coming up this Sunday, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is fighting back against the organized effort encouraging Catholics to ignore the collection.   CCHD's woes began last year, when its grants to ACORN were terminated following the allegations of voter fraud and embezzlement brought against them during the 2008 election. Since then, a growing number of other CCHD grantees have been found to advocate either abortion or same-sex marriage -- or both. Rob Gaspar of Bellarmine Veritas Ministry, Stephanie Block of the Catholic Media Coalition, American Life League, and Human Life International have published...