Free Republic

Joe Paterno, who died Sunday morning at age 85, will go down as a martyr. For what, it’s not clear. Not at this moment, anyway. It likely will take the sands of time and the sifting of those fine granules through the life and complex era of a dignified man to let us know what the final chiseled decision will be. Does the fact that Pater-no won more Division I college football games than anyone (409), had a high graduation rate, loved his family, gave huge sums to the Penn State library and stayed in a modest house in one...

By now, you've likely seen the interview with Joe Paterno printed in Sunday's Washington Post and conducted by their terrific and much-decorated writer Sally Jenkins. In it, she asks the former Penn State coach about his response to Mike McQueary's March 2002 report to him of alleged indecent activity involving Jerry Sandusky and a boy in a Lasch Building shower. This is the part of Jenkins' story that jumped out at me: He reiterated that McQueary was unclear with him about the nature of what he saw — and added that even if McQueary had been more graphic, he’s not...

Imagine California without the sunshine, New York without the cultural elan, New Jersey without Chris Christie. That’s Illinois. I have previously deemed the Governor of Illinois, Patrick Quinn (D.), the worst governor in the country. Go here to read the post in which I bestowed the title. After his meeting with the Illinois bishops on Friday December 16, 2011, I have attached “Lying” to his title. The bishops asked for the meeting to protest the constant pro-abortion advocacy of Quinn. After the meeting here is what Quinn said: “A lot of the discussion was how we could work together to...

"Two men reported to have links to fundamentalist Catholic groups were arrested at the weekend while attempting to disable the theatre's security system." Catholics protest against 'blasphemous' play in Paris Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 December 2011 13.16 EST Article history The Théâtre du Rond-Point's staging of Golgota Picnic is the latest target in a wave of demonstrations across France An earlier French protest against Golgota Picnic in November by fundamentalist Christians in Toulouse. Photograph: Remy Gabalda/AFP One of Paris's most prestigious theatres was being protected by riot police and guard-dog patrols on Thursday after it became the latest target...

Women religious at World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid. Washington D.C., Dec 10, 2011 / 08:05 am (CNA).- An article claiming that nuns should use contraception to lower their risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancers drew criticism from medical professionals who say the study’s basis is seriously flawed.Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, said the argument was so poorly made that she initially thought the article was a parody.“It’s that bad,” she told CNA on Dec. 8, adding that the claims were not only outlandish but unsupported by the evidence presented in the analysis.Australian researchers Kara...

An 81-year-old Catholic priest, expelled from the priesthood because he lives with his 85-year-old girlfriend, says he will take his case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary, Trouw reports on Tuesday. Jan Peijnenburg, who has lived with his girlfriend for 46 years, was sent a letter at the weekend telling him he has been suspended because he refuses to leave his partner. According to Trouw, the suspension will have little effect because Peijnenburg is retired and only rarely fulfills church duties.

Help Catholic students collect 100,000 Save Our Catholic Colleges protest petitions Why are pro-homosexual clubs allowed to promote anti-Catholic behavior on Catholic campuses? After examining the official web sites of 244 Catholic universities and colleges in America, TFP Student Action found that 107 – or 43% – recognize student clubs that favor the homosexual agenda.  Many of these clubs promote same-sex “marriage,” open homosexuality in the military, and push for the mainstreaming of unnatural vice. Here are a few examples: Saint Norbert College’s Rainbow Alliance promotes anti-Catholic events such as Celebrate Bisexuality Day, National Coming Out Day, Transgender Day, and...

Confronting elements of President Obama’s healthcare legislation that are so fundamentally restrictive of religious freedom that Jesus “would not qualify as ‘religious,’” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has been engaged in a protracted struggle to defend the integrity of Roman Catholic doctors in the face of a federal government seemingly bent on requiring them to act against their consciences. As a reward for their labors, House Minority Leader — and self-proclaimed “devout Catholic” — Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has belittled the bishops as nothing more than “lobbyists in Washington, D.C.” As reported in late September for The New American,...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) denounced efforts by the Catholic Church to persuade the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind new regulations that will force Catholics to engage in activities that violate their faith. The regulations would require all Americans to purchase coverage for services—like abortion—that are banned by Catholic tenets. The regulations also require all health service providers to offer these services regardless of any personal, religious, or ethical objections. “The Church’s attempt to meddle with affairs of state is offensive to our system of government,” Pelosi contended. “We don’t live in a theocracy. In America,...

The Gingrich campaign contacted me directly last night about the comments that he made to ABC News. The campaign sent me the following statement from Newt Gingrich. (Which is also on their website). I am very glad that the Gingrich campaign was quick to respond to the fallout from the ABC News interview and that they came out with a strong pro-life statement which reaffirms the scientific fact that life begins at conception....

Bishop Claudio Silvero says the devices are "accursed and tools of sin".... [SNIP] ....mobile phones ease access to pornography and aid in "inappropriate relations." He says about 40 percent of Christian families suffer damage "because of the bad use of cellular phones and the Internet." His campaign is not shared by many in the church. Cell phones are common among Vatican officials and the church has produced some of its own applications for them.

Radical homosexual group ‘encouraged’ by archbishop’s inaction at Most Holy RedeemerThe Rainbow Sash Movement, a homosexual-rights group known for disrupting Masses across the world on Pentecost Sundays, says San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer’s failure to police activities at the notoriously ‘gay-friendly’ Most Holy Redeemer parish “should be applauded.” In a Nov. 22 news release -- the same day California Catholic Daily published a story about the scheduled appearance of retired Episcopal Bishop Otis Charles at Most Holy Redeemer -- Rainbow Sash said it “wishes to congratulate the people and pastor” of the parish for inviting Bishop Charles, noting he had...

In the sedate and sober world of bankruptcy law, one lawyer's memorandum sticks out like a sore loser. "Across the country the court systems and particularly the Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church," the Nov. 25 filing said. It went on to call one bankruptcy judge "a Catholic Knight Witch Hunter," said one trustee was "a priest's boy" and claimed another trustee is a "Jesuitess." It got worse from there. Hastings lawyer Rebekah Nett also called U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher and other court personnel...

Yesterday, November 29, the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights dismissed a George Washington University law professor’s complaint that The Catholic University of America (CUA) committed sex discrimination when it decided to return to single-sex dormitories. The D.C. Human Rights Office dismissed Banzhaf’s complaint this week, according to The Washington Post, “writing that single-sex dorms are not discriminatory because they do not treat men and women differently. The order says that under Banzhaf’s reasoning, the university would be forced to abandon single-sex sports teams, locker rooms and bathrooms.” “Catholic University’s return to single-sex dormitories puts the Catholic Church’s teaching...

With all due respect, Pope Benedict XVI either lives in an alternate reality or needs better PR handlers. His comments over the weekend to U.S. bishops about the sex abuse of children showed a continued disconnect with the church’s mishandling of this ongoing scandal. The pope referenced the church’s “conscientious effort” to confront sex abuse by priests. Uh? Perhaps the pope meant to say conscientious cover-up. No institution has done more to deny and downplay the sexual abuse of young boys than the Catholic Church. No institution has done more to discredit victims and protect pedophile priests than the Catholic...

To certain Catholics, Peter Kreeft is a rock star. That was evident Nov. 18, when nearly 500 people filled an auditorium at the Bishop O'Connor Center in Madison to hear him talk. Kreeft, a Catholic author and Boston College philosophy professor, had been asked by the Catholic Diocese of Madison to speak on whether "a Catholic can be a liberal." Kreeft called it "a very challenging question" and said he'd never spoken on it before. Kreeft is a strong defender of the Catholic Church against what some people call "modernists" or, more derisively, "cafeteria Catholics," people who pick and choose...

VATICAN, November 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the highest ranking cardinals in the Vatican has said that the United States is “well on the way” to the persecution of Christians. Cardinal Raymond Burke Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and now the head of the Vatican’s highest court, told Catholic News Agency that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S., “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.” Asked if the cardinal could even see American Catholics being arrested...

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Walking across the tidy campus of Bob Jones University, there’s no obvious sign this bastion of Christian fundamentalism is also home to one of the nation’s largest collections of Renaissance and Baroque religious art from the heart of Catholic Europe. It’s all the more surprising since the school’s old-time Protestant leaders have for years taught that Catholicism is a “cult” and even the “Mother of Harlots.” “You go into that gallery and its big, amazing paintings are really staggering, and you know you can’t buy altarpieces like that anymore,” said David Steel, curator of European art at...

Vatican City, Nov 25, 2011 / 02:32 pm (CNA).- Monsignor Charles Brown, a 52 year-old New York priest who currently works in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is rumored to become the Pope’s next apostolic nuncio to Ireland.“If that rumor is true I’d say hallelujah,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York told CNA Nov. 24. “What a good guy he is,” the archbishop added. “He’s a young, vibrant, very theologically savvy but pastorally sensitive guy.”Archbishop Dolan added that Msgr. Brown has “loved in New York” and has “a wonderful pastoral side to him” due to...

A notoriously 'gay-friendly' parish in San Francisco has invited an openly homosexual Episcopalian cleric to lead an Advent Vespers service. Most Holy Redeemer parish asked Bishop Otis Charles, a retired Episcopalian prelate, to lead the November 30 service. After serving as the Bishop of Utah from 1971 to 1993, he publicly announced that he is homosexual. Divorced from the mother of his 5 children, he solemnized a same-sex union in 2004.

'Call No Man Father': Why do Catholics call Priests ‘Father‘? By Matt1618 I want to look at a passage that is often used to say that Catholics are unbiblical because we refer to the priests as Father. Matthew 23:9 is the passage where Jesus says 'Call no man Father'. How can we call priests Father, when Jesus explicitly says we shouldn't use such language except of God the Father? I want to start off by looking at the passage in the larger context with the Revised Standard Version, Matthew 23:1-10: 1 Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his...

There he goes again. Embattled Catholic law professor and former Obama ambassador to Malta, Douglas Kmiec, is back defending the pro-abortion president to Catholics, this time over conscience issues. Writing in the National Catholic Reporter today, Kmiec essentially tells Catholics to get over the fact that the Obama administration is dangerously close to adopting new Obamacare rules that will require insurance companies and religious organizations to pay for insurance that will cover birth control, contraception, and drugs that can sometimes cause abortions. Without saying so directly, Kmiec essentially takes on the Catholic bishops and their argument that the Obama administration...

Christopher Manion This past September, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, President of the USCCB, sent President Obama a letter that was long overdue. “I write with a growing sense of urgency about recent actions taken by your Administration that both escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage,” the archbishop wrote. “The Justice Department’s [attack on the Defense of Marriage Act], in addition to other troubling federal decisions occurring recently, prompts me yet again to register my grave concerns.”Archbishop Dolan’s public overture represents a significant departure from the path of his predecessors. Only...

As I reported last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a campaign to expand the concept of "religious liberty," a move intended in part to exempt Catholic and other religious organizations from legal requirements, or, put another way, to permit Catholic organizations to discriminate based on religious belief. One key example of late is the USCCB's complaint that the Department of Health and Human Services' refusal to grant it a contract to provide services to sex trafficking victims was a case of religious discrimination. USCCB will not refer sex trafficking victims for reproductive health services, a requirement of...

Catholic paper draws new criticism over old woundsHe came to Boston from Spain 15 years ago on a Roman Catholic lay mission, a deeply devout father of seven who forged his faith within a controversial religious movement born of the slums of Madrid. Now Antonio Enrique is editor of The Pilot, the newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese, and a target of criticism for articles that have opened old wounds for a church trying to move past a decade of turbulence. He published a column two weeks ago suggesting that homosexuality is caused by the devil. The uproar had barely faded...

[first paragraph omitted -- so that useful paragraphs might be excerpted...] ... The shepherds of America's 65 million Roman Catholics met this week for their fall conference, where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops created a new Committee for Religious Liberty. Father William E. Lori, bishop for Bridgeport, Conn., and chairman of the new group, told the assembled men of the cloth that "there is no religious liberty if we are not free to express our faith in the public square and if we are not free to act on that faith." The church has been embroiled in several skirmishes...

Who Can Find Grass and Water in the Desert Pope Benedict XVI The Pope dedicates the General Audience to the figure of the shepherd evoked in Psalm 23 On Wednesday morning, 5 October [2011], at the General Audience in St Peter's Square, resuming his Catechesis on prayer, the Holy Father commented on the image of the shepherd who "knows each one of his sheep and calls them by name; and they follow him because they recognize him". This week Benedict XVI reflected on Psalm 23[22]. The following is a translation of the Pope's Catechesis, which was given in Italian. Dear...

A majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama. And for it, we got a nice photo op at the University of Notre Dame and some ameliorating verbiage. But since then, we’ve seen a long list of actions that’s caused obvious displeasure among many Catholics, including priests and bishops. And it has some asking if the Obama administration anti-Catholic? For answers, let’s look at some recent actions by the administration. Recently, The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed a Freedom of Information Act request to discover why the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declined to renew a...

Bishops in three Illinois dioceses announced Nov. 14 that they have dropped their lawsuit against the state and will shut down their adoption and foster care programs, after a civil union law required them to provide their services to same-sex couples. “The decision not to pursue further appeals was reached with great reluctance, but was necessitated by the fact that the State of Illinois has made it financially impossible for our agencies to continue to provide these services,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville, and Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet. “Since we...

Robert Gilligan of the Illinois Catholic Conference Belleville, Ill., Nov 11, 2011 / 07:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois announced that will it separate from the Belleville diocese and offer adoptions and foster-care services to same-sex couples.“What you're seeing at the state level in Illinois, what you're seeing at the national level in Washington, D.C., is a consistent promulgation of policies and laws that are making it very difficult for faith-based agencies that believe that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Illinois Catholic Conference, told CNA on...

I have now watched all four parts of this series presently on EWTN ( despite EWTN) and have found truly edifying, a most wonderful production all aspects except a the minute allusions to post Vat2 “pontificate”(s) and the like. A traditionalist/conservative of ANY stripe should be able to watch this except for a couple winces. I found particularly moving Part I devoted largely to St. Mary Magdalene. Part III has much on the Vendee counter-revolutionary battles, a real eye-opener for me. It also includes a couple minutes of a Tridentine Rite taped just for the series. Repeat: there are rare...

<p>America’s Catholic bishops are planning how to strategically engage in the politically-charged issues of gay marriage, and access to abortion and contraception during their annual fall meeting.</p> <p>A portion of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ three-day meeting starting Nov. 14 in Baltimore will be used to strategize their already-tense relationship with the Obama administration and the public. Maryland was one of the first states to protect religious freedom.</p>

The Catholic Diocese of Belleville and Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois said Thursday that they would part ways in the wake of a new state law that granted same-sex couples the right to seek civil unions and disrupted the work of Catholic agencies working in foster care and adoption. The announcement came in separate statements months after the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services stopped referring foster care and adoption cases to Catholic charitable groups. Catholic agencies have refused to license same-sex couples in civil unions as foster parents, a position the state sees as discriminatory. The Catholic...

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput encouraged Catholic universities to rediscover the Church's intellectual tradition and use it to shape society's future. “Catholic higher education is heir to the greatest intellectual, moral and cultural patrimony in human history,” the archbishop said in a Nov. 10 address at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Catholic intellectual tradition, he said, offers a “deeply satisfying answer” to the questions of human life, and is “beautiful because it's true.” “It has nothing to be embarrassed about and every reason to be on fire with confidence and apostolic zeal. We only defeat ourselves – and we...

DECREE The intimate partnership of life and love that constitutes the married state was established by God and endowed by Him with its own proper nature and laws. According to Divine Law, the nature of marriage is defined as a covenant between one man and one woman by which they establish a partnership of the whole life, which is ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. Jesus Christ affirmed the privileged place of marriage in human and Christian society by raising this union to the dignity of a Sacrament when entered into...

Victims of clerical sexual abuse will find it easier to bring compensation claims against the Catholic church after a judge ruled it can be held responsible for the wrongdoings of its priests. [SNIP] The judge said although there had been no formal contract between the church and the priest, the late Father Baldwin, there were "crucial features" that should be recognised. He said: "He [Baldwin] was provided with the premises, the pulpit and the clerical robes. He was directed into the community with that full authority and was given free rein to act as a representative of the church. He...

Associated Press"The marital union between one man and one woman was universally accepted by civil law as a constitutive element of human society, which is vital to the human family and to the continuation of the human race," Archbishop Dolan said in the decree dated Oct. 18. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Following the spiritual lead of Pope Benedict, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan has issued an official statement banning gay marriage in Roman Catholic churches.Supporters of the Marriage Equality Act were left to ponder why and whether his statement was politically motivated. Archbishop Dolan issued a decree forbidding any priest or...

The Archdiocese of Baltimore added a new religious order of nuns Tuesday, its first in decades and one that began as an Anglican community. The All Saints' Sisters of the Poor left the Episcopal Church for the Roman Catholic Church two years ago. By a decree from the Vatican, they are now an official diocesan priory, or order, the same designation carried by the School Sisters of Notre Dame or the Daughters of Charity. "We feel we have broken ground," said Mother Christina Christie, leader of the community and a nun since 1966. Yesterday, All Saints' Day, at the Basilica...

<p>Baker served more than five years of a 10-year prison sentence for his 2007 conviction and was scheduled to be released in August. But the Los Angeles district attorney's office filed a petition to have him committed to a state hospital indefinitely as a sexually violent predator.</p>

Sr. Jacinta Pollard holds a statue of St. Joseph and Jesus in a picture with some of her fellow sisters. Credit: Franciscan Sisters of the RenewalLeeds, England, Nov 2, 2011 / 12:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Franciscan Sister Jacinta Pollard, one of the women profiled in the BBC's new documentary “Young Nuns,” hopes her community's prayers and sacrifices can help bring Britain back to the Catholic faith. “It's like living in pagan Rome, actually! It must have been very similar, for the early Christians,” said Sister Jacinta, head of St. Clare's Convent in Leeds. Her growing community consists of five women...

NEW YORK — When Timothy Dolan arrived in New York nearly three years ago to take over the state's Catholic Archdiocese, his "brother bishops" had a bleak warning to deliver."We've got a bruising battle coming up over same-sex marriage," he remembers being told in his first meeting with local clergy. "We are not going to relent, we are going to give it everything we've got. But you need to know that the fortune-tellers are telling us that we ain't gonna win."The Roman Catholic Church had long been at the forefront of the fight over defining marriage in the Empire State,...

Atlanta, Ga., Nov 3, 2011 / 03:31 am (CNA).- Catholics Come Home has announced a major prime time evangelization initiative set to air on American TV networks beginning in mid-Advent and ending after Christmas.The initiative’s advertising campaign aims to reach 250 million television viewers in over 10,000 U.S. cities and in every U.S. diocese.“These inspiring messages are sponsored by 30,000 Catholic families who want to invite neighbors, relatives, and co-workers to the largest family reunion in modern history,” said Catholics Come Home founder Tom Peterson.The ad used in the campaign notes the beauty and history of the Catholic Church....

BOSTON – The oldest Roman Catholic newspaper in the United States has retracted an opinion column suggesting the devil may be responsible for gay attraction. The column, which appeared Friday in the Archdiocese of Boston's official newspaper, The Pilot, was titled "Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction." It was written by Daniel Avila, an associate director for policy and research for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In the column, Avila says "the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil." It also says "disruptive...

Illinois' six Catholic bishops have deplored Catholic governor Pat Quinn's role as the presenter of a “Pro-Choice Leadership Award” at an abortion advocacy group's upcoming ceremony. “We deeply regret the governor's decision to present this award, which so closely associates him with a political action group whose purpose is contrary to the common good,” the six bishops said in a Nov. 2 statement released by the Catholic Conference of Illinois. “With this action, Governor Quinn has gone beyond a political alignment with those supporting the legal right to kill children in their mother's wombs, to rewarding those deemed most successful...

November 2, 2011   The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed  (All Souls) The following are a selection of the readings that may be chosen for this day. Reading 1 Wis 3:1-9 The souls of the just are in the hand of God,and no torment shall touch them.They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;and their passing away was thought an afflictionand their going forth from us, utter destruction.But they are in peace.For if before men, indeed, they be punished,yet is their hope full of immortality;chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,because God tried themand found...

An extract from Eamon Duffy’s new book, "Ten Popes Who Shook the World"For 100 years or more, most western countries have worked on the axiom that our common life together ought to be deliberately secular. Religion in a free society may be acceptable as a private activity, like knitting or going to the gym, but it has no proper place in the spheres of politics, economics or citizenship. The rise of militant Islam, like the influence of the Christian Right on American foreign policy and, perhaps more encouragingly, the role of the Catholic Church in the overthrow of Polish Communism,...

No, the pope is not supporting Occupy Wall Street. It’s been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled “progressive� Catholics.First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish pope was a hero all over the world during an epic pontificate that bent history’s arc in a more humane direction, and did so without the aid of liberation theology. John Paul’s funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, became, in the apt phrase of NBC anchor Brian Williams, “the human event of a generation,� a moniker unlikely to be attached...

October 31 is only three days away. For Protestants, it is Reformation Day, the date in 1517 on which Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to that famous door in Wittenberg, Germany. Since I returned to the Catholic Church in April 2007, each year the commemoration has become a time of reflection about my own journey and the puzzles that led me back to the Church of my youth. One of those puzzles was the relationship between the Church, Tradition, and the canon of Scripture. As a Protestant, I claimed to reject the normative role that Tradition plays in the...

WASHINGTON — In an escalation of the U.S. bishops’ campaign against “grave threats to religious liberty,” Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., endorsed three bills designed to strengthen First Amendment rights. The bishop, who heads the newly established Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops testified before Congress yesterday, Oct. 26. “I am here today to call to your attention grave threats to religious liberty that have emerged even since June — grim validations of the bishops’ recognition of the need for urgent and concerted action in this area,” said the bishop. “I focus...

The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights is investigating the Catholic University of America. The Tower, a student newspaper at the university, says the charges allege the school does not provide Muslim students with places to hold frequent prayer services free of crosses or other Catholic symbols. John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University Professor of Public Interest Law, ade the complaint to the human rights agency. In a news release Banzhaf alleges: "It is alleged that CUA does not provide space -- as other universities do -- for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them...