Free Republic

* Reverend Father Kevin Robinson is priest at St. Anthony of Padua in New Jersey * In May, Robinson sued Governor Phil Murphy over COVID-19 restrictions * Murphy limited church gatherings as part of statewide stay-at-home order * Robinson said restrictions were unconstitutional and discriminatory * Supreme Court ordered lower courts to reconsider Murphy's restrictions * Robinson said size of his congregation doubled since suing the governor A northern New Jersey priest who sued Governor Phil Murphy after he was threatened with arrest if he held Mass said that the size of his congregation doubled after he went public with...

An ultraconservative group plans to ordain 13 Roman Catholic priests in Minnesota — even though their elevations likely won't be recognized by the Vatican. The St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, part of the Society of St. Pius X, will host the ordinations of 12 U.S.-based priests and another from France in Winona on Friday. The Vatican says ordinations by the society aren't legitimate, even though Pope Benedict XVI recently lifted the excommunications of its leaders. The society was founded by those opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council and especially its outreach to Jews and other religions. The...

IS BENEDICT XVI launching a liturgical reform to restore tradition and reverence in Catholic worship? Having permitted the use of the ’62 Missal as the “Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite,” is he now trying to make New Mass itself “more traditional”? Conservative bloggers who devote themselves following liturgical matters in the post-Vatican II Church would answer yes, and they are positively ecstatic. Members of this group refer to themselves as a “new liturgical movement” and call for “a reform of the reform,” by which they mean a reworking of the Novus Ordo. Recently they have started to attach great...

QUEBEC CITY, Canada (The Catholic Register) – A small religious movement that follows a woman who claims to be the reincarnation of the blessed virgin Mary has been declared schismatic by a Canadian cardinal.Once a pious association authorized by the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Quebec City and other parts of eastern Canada, the Army of Mary began to stray from the flock in the 1980s and had its teachings condemned by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2001. Then it went a step too far when it ordained five deacons at its headquarters, Centre Spiri-Maria, outside Quebec...

P. 97 THE NINTH ARTICLE (of the Apostles' Creed) "..Later times were to behold wicked men, imitative as the ape that would like to pass for a human being, who arrogate to themselves exclusively the name of Catholic;"

Pope Benedict XVI and the American Catholic Revolution By E.F. Winlsow 4-22-2005 The elevation of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the office of Pope has been hailed by conservatives as a guarantor that the Roman Catholic Church will not sway to the unpredictable and frequently fickle winds of cultural change. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he has a reputation for holding unwaveringly to the foundational tenets of his faith, and rooting out movements and philosophies that fall outside of the pale of orthodoxy. As important as this is during the time in which we live,...

As millions gathered in Rome to say goodbye, some are left to wonder what it all means The Catholic’s first instinct is to observe the death of a Pope with silence and prayer, reserving until the appropriate time any sort of analysis of the relative merits and demerits of the just-concluded pontificate. Such analysis is inevitable with every Pope’s passing. But the mass media are not going to allow us the usual period of circumspection, for they are “spinning” the death John Paul II the way they spin their coverage of everything Catholic: in favor of the world’s long revolt...

TO THE SOCIETY OF ST. PIUS X: "YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!" Bishop Bruskewitz -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Foundation has received more compliments on the lead article in the last issue than any article which has appeared in CHRISTIFIDELIS since the newsletter began publication in 1984. The Diocese of Lincoln has received thousands of letters expressing support and gratitude for Bishop Bruskewitz's action and only an insignificant number criticizing him, so I am not surprised that our readers would react as they did. Even so, there is one category of criticism received by the Diocese of Lincoln and the Foundation which...

Two of the three documents/articles below were prepared within The Vatican. The first document/article focuses on the present day China's persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in China ( commonly referred to as China's "underground Catholic Church"). The second document/article quotes Cardinal Etchegaray, retired president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He has frequently served as the Pope's diplomatic envoy. On 03 October 2003, he publicly denied the existence of a divide between the underground and Chinese government-recognized 'patriotic' Catholic Church. "There is only one Church with two faces," he said. "There is not one 'patriotic' Church and...

Pope to meet Williams before crisis summit Meeting overshadowed by threat of Anglican schism By Simon Caldwell and Josephine Siedlecka The Pope is to meet the leader of the Church of England just weeks before a crisis meeting will take place to stop the disintegration of the Anglican Communion. The historic encounter between John Paul II and Dr Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, will represent the first time the two have ever met. But the event on October 4 will be overshadowed by the impending summit of world Anglican primates in the wake of the election by the...

VATICAN, Jan 27, 03 (CWNews.com) -- The Holy See has confirmed the excommunication of 7 Catholic women who sought ordination to the priesthood through a schismatic sect, in a ceremony that took place in Austria in June 2002. A decree announcing the excommunication had already been released, on August 5, 2002. But the women had appealed that action. Their appeal was heard in December, the Vatican has announced, and a new decree reaffirming their excommunication was approved by Pope John Paul II, and signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.