Free Republic

As the recent battle for a proper understanding of religious liberty shows, our culture and many of our government leaders and organizations are becoming increasingly secularized and hostile to religion and religious practice.Yet another example of this is a recent rule change in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). According to this program, a person who has been engaged in Public Service employment for ten years, can have the remainder of their Student Loan form the government forgiven, presuming they have faithfully been paying it up till then.However, a recent rule change now excludes those who are involved in any...

"And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (From this week's Torah portion, Yitro, Exodus 19:6) Before the giving of the Torah, before the Ten Commandments, before the most momentous and splendorous ceremony in history, the Creator explains why. Before "Honor your parents", before "Guard the Sabbath day to sanctify it", before all the 'how', G-d explains why He gave us the Torah; why this trek from the House of Bondage to the Land of Israel. What is the destiny? What is the purpose? "And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests...

Fr. George Rutler was kind enough to share his latest parish bulletin concerning the recent HHS mandate with the Cardinal Newman Society.He writes:Our many fellow Catholics now enchained for the Faith of our Fathers in such places as China, Syria, and Egypt are, as Father Faber’s hymn says, “in heart and conscience free.” But what happens when a government tries to chain the conscience itself?A few weeks ago, in a remarkably unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the attempt of the present Administration in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC to restrict religious freedom. Chief Justice Roberts...

We live in a secularized world of nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is unwelcome. Rooted in the “Enlightenment,” this view supports a secularized and authoritarian public square enforced by government and that progress requires forcing religion ever backward into remote corners of society. In short, America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God...

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we...

While necessity is the mother of invention, sloth and envy beget mediocrity and upheaval – the twin siblings of secular-socialism. It is in this vein that a rebellious and increasingly violent spirit of incoherent anarchy continues to fester in urban centers across the nation. This is most evident in the form of the envy-driven "Occupy wherever" nonsense embraced by the "progressive" establishment. Still, this Obama-supported effort to supplant, through lawless imposition, our free-market constitutional republic with some misguided conception of an outcome-based equalitocracy is rooted in much more than just good old-fashioned class warfare. Part and parcel of secular-socialism is...

CUMBERLAND — Thanks to a small group of local men, the tradition of erecting a Nativity scene and decorating a large Christmas tree on the lawn of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in downtown Cumberland will continue. Two years ago, city officials decided to end city government’s involvement with the Nativity scene. According to Michael Mudge, one of the men who is keeping the tradition alive, city leaders had received a complaint from two people who objected to local government being involved in the Christian Nativity tradition.After Christmas 2009, the city donated the Nativity items to The Cumberland Nativity & Tree Display...

The Vatican has accused the BBC of an ‘act of enormous foolishness’ for dumping the terms BC and AD in case they cause offence to non-Christians. The Roman Catholic Church also severely criticised the ‘senseless hypocrisy’ of Britain’s public service broadcaster for using a false respect for other religions to purge Christianity from Western culture. ‘It is by now very clear that respect for other religions is only an excuse, because those who wish to erase every trace of Christianity from Western culture are only a few secular westerners,’ said a front page editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official...

The origin of the war against Christianity in the United States can be traced back to the early days of the public school movement when Unitarians, Owenite socialists and atheists, and Hegelian pantheists vehemently rejected the God-centered worldview of the Founding Fathers and sought to secularize education and substitute salvation through scientific education than by salvation through Christ . However, it wasn’t until the turn of the last century and the rise of the progressive education movement that the war in America took on the militancy which characterizes it today. The progressives were, for the most part, members of the...

John Rossomando Follow John on Twitter A reporter’s question to GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich whether or not he would impose Christian values “on everyone else” Wednesday during the announcement of his 21st Century Contract With America showcases the growing intolerance of Christians on the part of militant secularists. This is also true of the other relgiously motivated attacks on other GOP presidential candidates. My question to this secularist journalists is: “When will you keep your secular utilitarian worldview to yourself and stop trying to force everyone else to accept it?” The First Amendment’s establishment clause aimed to prevent Congress...

Non-believers are often more educated, more tolerant and know more about God than the pious. A new wave of research is trying to figure out what goes on in the minds of an ever-growing group of people known as the "Nones". Barry Kosmin is a different kind of market researcher. His data focuses on consumers targeted by companies like Lifechurch.tv or World Overcomers Christian Church TM. The sociologist analyzes church-affiliated commercial entities, from souvenir shops to television channels and worship services. But the most significant target of Kosmin's research is the consumer group most likely to shy away from such...

Atheists and agnostics have a lot to learn from gays about the essential role of coming out in any long-term battle for personal respect and political recognition in American society. When New York’s state Senate passed a historic bill legalizing gay marriage last weekend, I happened to be attending a reunion of my eighth-grade class at St. Thomas Aquinas School in East Lansing, MI. A striking fact about this group of men and women, raised on the Catholic and American verities of the 1950s, was that many of my classmates, influenced by gay relatives and friends, long ago discarded the...

Andrea Minichiello Williams. Credit: Christian Concern London, England, Jul 1, 2011 / 05:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the U.K.'s Christian Legal Centre sees persecution of Christians in public life, looming behind controversial recent remarks by Equality and Human Rights Commissioner Trevor Phillips. Andrea Minichiello Williams, who directs the legal center, told CNA that Phillips also sounded “naive,” saying he “doesn't seem to be living in the same Britain that I'm living in.” Williams is not the only one who wondered where Phillips got some of the ideas he expressed in a June 19 interview with the Telegraph newspaper....

Denver, Colo., May 21, 2011 / 11:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- European and American experts say changing Malta's divorce ban would show weakness to radical Muslims, who could capitalize on the island's drift toward secularism to push for Islamic laws. “Forced secularism is a gift to the radical Muslims,” said Stephen Schwartz, a U.S. author and researcher on the Islamic world. “They have the perspective that confusion and secularization is good among the Christians.”“Everybody has reason to be worried about radical Islam, and this is an issue of radical Islam,” said Schwartz, founder of the Washington-based Center for Islamic Pluralism....

The United Church of Canada, which was formed 86 years ago with the grand vision to bring Protestants together “in one glorious national church,” is undergoing one of the most precipitous slides in modern religious history. In the midst of a breathtaking erosion in its membership, the church is undertaking what some call a great experiment to redefine itself through an intense engagement with the surrounding secular world; whether it be through advocating for the environment, fighting for the rights of homosexuals to marry or taking on the cause of the Palestinians, the church has attempted to blur the boundaries...

ARIS — France’s governing party pressed ahead on Tuesday with a controversial debate on the nature of secularism and the challenges of Islam, an exercise criticized by some in the government and numerous religious leaders and ridiculed as cynical by both the Socialist opposition and the far-right National Front. Jean-François Copé, the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, spoke Tuesday in Paris at a discussion of secularism and Islam in French society. Held at a Paris hotel in the presence of some 600 religious leaders, legislators and journalists, the debate was shunned by prominent members of the government,...

Where have all the children gone? It's a problem that Mark Steyn first addressed in his book America Alone. Other than a piece Jonathan Last recently wrote for Weekly Standard, few if any reporters, pundits, politicians, or scholars seemed to take any interest. This is rather astonishing in so far as everything from our national security, economy, and future well-being depends on our ability to procreate. As Mark Steyn quipped, "...a people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in." If one is to glimpse at the TFR (Total...

The Arab revolt underway in Egypt may be unique. Previous popular uprisings were underwritten by anti-colonial sentiments. Contemporary revolts, (including unrest in Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, and Jordan) target nationalist or secular governments. The wealthiest Arab states, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, have been financing the ideological struggle against Arab secularism through surrogates like the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikwan) for decades. Now the most populous state in the Arab League, Egypt, may fall to the Brotherhood like a ripe pomegranate. A brief history of previous Arab revolts offers some perspective. The corrupt Ottoman caliphate in Istanbul was the target for...

Miguel Diaz, the US ambassador to the Holy See, gave an interview to Vatican Radio after Pope Benedict’s address about the state of the world in which he claimed that faith groups in the US did not have a problem with intolerant  secularism.In response to Pope Benedict’s  warning against the marginalisation of religion in Western society in the name of a false pluralism Ambassador Diaz said:‘“One of the great treasures of American society has been religious tolerance, its at the heart of what it is to be American. We do not have this kind of radical secularism that dismisses the positive...

Father Cantalamessa's 2nd Advent Sermon "The Christian Response to Secularism" VATICAN CITY, DEC. 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is the Advent reflection delivered Friday by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the Pontifical Household, for Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia. The talk was titled: "We Proclaim to You the Eternal Life (1 John 1:2): The Christian Response to Secularism." * * *1. Secularization and secularismIn this meditation we are concerned with the second obstacle evangelization encounters in the modern Western world: secularization. Stated in the motu proprio with which the Pope instituted the Pontifical Council for Promoting...

Evangelization Needs Belief in Eternity, Says Preacher Father Cantalamessa Gives Advent Sermon to Pope and Curia VATICAN CITY, DEC. 10, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa says that a renewed faith in eternal life is one of the keys to the New Evangelization. The preacher of the Pontifical Household offered this suggestion today during the second of three Advent sermons that he is giving in the presence of the Pope and the Roman Curia.Father Cantalamessa proposed at the beginning of the series to offer "a small contribution to the need of the Church" for a New Evangelization, concretely by examining three...

In ancient Rome, the contest was Christians vs. lions. In Loudoun County today, it's Christians vs. atheists. This year, the atheists came out on top. Unlike in Rome, neither side ate the other. But the passions still run strong in what's becoming an annual competition each December for 10 precious spots on the lawn of the historic county courthouse in Leesburg, where the rivals get a chance to publicly promote their philosophies. One side celebrates the birth of Jesus with Nativity scenes and a Christmas tree. The other marks the winter solstice with banners and signs praising reason, denouncing religion...

Holiday decorations can easily become controversial because Christmas is both a national and a religious holiday, and anything that refers to Christmas can feel like “an alien symbol being forced upon a non-Christian population,” said Jack Santino, a professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University.

Moscow Patriarchate, Vatican wage common fight against secular liberalism - Patriarch Kirill Moscow, November 19, Interfax -Despite a difficult relationship between the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, they have been effectively cooperating along many avenues, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia told students and diplomats at the Russian Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. "Together with the Roman Catholic Church we have been defending the traditional Christian concept of family and human values from aggressive secular liberalism. Our Churches are waging a common fight against medico-biological experiments incompatible with respect for human dignity," His Holiness said. Cooperation...

Originally the message of the Tea Party seemed clear “Less taxes and spending”. Simple enough, Right? Somehow they have gotten distracted. Very, very distracted. I know that all Tea Parties and their participants are different, so it is not fair for me to throw them all under the bus. So for those who are distracted; let me attempt to recapture your attention. You wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of breaking glass, when you stumble out of your bed into the living room you find a man standing there with your TV in his arms....

Archbishop Charles Chaput Spisske Podhradie, Slovakia, Aug 25, 2010 / 05:48 am (CNA).- Addressing the first session of the 15th symposium for the Canon Law Association of Slovakia on Tuesday, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver called for Catholics in America and Europe to oppose the rise of a “state-encouraged atheism” which reduces religion to “an individual lifestyle accessory” incapable of influencing the world. The archbishop exhorted Christians to respond to these trends by rediscovering their historic faith as the only sound basis for a just society.Recalling the historical experience of the Slovakian Church under Communism, Archbishop Chaput told the assembly...

Regarding the destructiveness of "gay marriage": To me, what is at stake in this debate is not only the potential unhappiness of children, grave as that is; it is our ability to maintain the most basic components of our humanity. I believe, in fact, that we are at an “Antigone moment.” ... The Apostle Paul speaks of “the wisdom of the world” but there it means a kind of assumption of wisdom where in fact none exists. Reducing all wisdom to within the Church is merely the reverse of the secular paradigm, imposing a categorical distinction where in fact none...

Americans celebrate their independence today in a very different society from the one born in 1776. The beliefs the Founders held most dear, and upon which they built a uniquely free society, are largely alien -- even objectionable -- in today's America. I am not referring to the changes brought about by President Obama, but to a deeper change that preceded Obama and which fueled his ascendancy. The principles of freedom upon which America was built -- such as the ideas that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights -- arose from...

For atheist human rights activist, crucifix in Italian classrooms not against secularism Nirmala Carvalho According to Lenin Raghuvanshi, “Human rights and democracy do not exist in a vacuum, in a value-neutral space. Denying the identity, culture and history of a society is a violation of secularism and human rights.” New Delhi (AsiaNews) – “The crucifix in Italian classrooms is not a tradition that goes against the values of secularism,” Indian human rights activist Lenin Raghuvanshi told AsiaNews. “A secular education means learning from history and logic. Jesus Christ brought peace, reconciliation, non-violence and justice in the world,” said Raghuvanshi who...

While many secular scholars mock the prophetic writings of the Old and New Testaments as being irrational and fundamentalist, and too many Christians seemingly chime in by eschewing the idea of a literal fulfillment of such apocalyptic predictions, especially when it comes to great events like the Rapture of the Church (1 Cor. 15:51-52; 1 Thess. 4:13-18), the Great Tribulation (Jer. 30:1-7; Rev 6-19), the Second Coming of Christ (Matt 24:30-31; Rev 19:11-16), the glorious Millennial Messianic Kingdom of the future when the people of Israel will finally receive the full benefits of all of their covenants promised to them...

John Allen looks at the background of Pope Benedict's coming trip to Fatima, Portugal. He notes that the five foreign trips the Pope has scheduled for this year-- to Malta, Portugal, Cyprus, Great Britain, and Spain-- "are almost laid out in ascending order of difficulty." Benedict in Portugal: A different crisis, secularism, and 'Marian Cool' As fate would have it, Pope Benedict XVI's five foreign trips in 2010 are almost laid out in ascending order of difficulty. Last month's weekend stop in Malta, arguably the most Catholic society on earth, amounted to the warm-up act, while next week's four-day swing...

A few days ago, I got curious about the wording of those proclamations issued by several state governors announcing Confederate History Month. (Mostly, I wondered why a patriotic current citizen of the United States of America would want to celebrate what were unarguably the deadliest traitors in our nation's history.) As I found examples of the proclamations online, I was struck by some of what I'd consider the "boilerplate," the way the date of issuance is described. Here's how the governor of Georgia did it: "In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the...

Monday March 29, 2010 Cardinal Ouellet: Quebec Must 'Return to God' By Patrick B. CraineQUEBEC CITY, Quebec, March 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada, has once again called for Quebec to renounce its anti-religious secularism and return to its Catholic-Christian roots.“I sadly note that the total rejection of our Catholic identity leads more and more to a total mess in education,” the Cardinal wrote last month in Le Soleil.  “The byproducts are well known: fragile couples, broken families, massive abortions, soon euthanasia, suicides at alarming rates, evident school dropouts, work seven...

A. A. Gill, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, usually writes restaurant reviews. He’s probably pretty good at it. He should stick to the food. Unfortunately, however, after a recent visit to the Kentucky’s Creation Museum, he could not contain his disdain. In a mocking article in Vanity Fair, he made fun of the city of Cincinnati as being “Behind the times� and its residents as “Neanderthals lacking technology.� Some Cincinnatians took umbrage. And then Gill took some back. Going just a bit too far, in my opinion. In a recent interview with Meghan Fox, Gill hurled a whole new...

Vatican City, Mar 12, 2010 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict met with priests and bishops participating in an international theological convention on Friday and spoke with them on the importance of understanding what it means to be a priest. This awareness of their identity is all the more important as secularism advances and some try to reduce the priesthood to being almost a 'social worker.'Speaking of priestly identity in the modern "policentric" context, which often fades our idea of identity, "it is important clearly to bear in mind the theological specificity of ordained ministry, in order not to...

I find it quite frightening on how badly prepared the Church in England and Wales is to combat secularism and opposition to the Church's teaching. We give the impression that we don't really care. This weekend there will be a demonstration against the Papal visit outside Westminster Cathedral followed by a rally outside the Italian embassy, presumably in the hope of attracting the attention of the Italian media, amongst the speakers will be Peter Tatchell, it advertises itself as: We support: · Women's equality and reproductive rights · Equal rights for LGBT people · A secular Europe - immune to...

The View from Europe By Rosa Anna Tremoglie The legal squabbles in America about the separation of church and state is at once, disconcerting, perplexing and amusing to Italians. It is with a sense of irony that we view this continuing argument. Italians were...

At a time of year when faith is celebrated by most Americans, it may surprise some to learn that many students of faith and history believe we are living in a post-Christian age. It is not apparent at the local malls now so festively decorated, but it can be seen in some telltale cultural indicators. One of those is the number of attacks on people of faith, particularly Jews. Throughout much of the world today, where Christianity is in decline attacks on Jews are on the rise. In post-Christian Europe, Jews are often victims of a deeply entrenched anti-Semitism. Synagogues...

Introduction The famous evolutionist Julian Huxley once said, "Any view of God as a personal being is becoming frankly untenable. The difficulty of understanding the functions of a personal ruler in a universe which the march of knowledge is showing us ever more clearly as self-ordered and self-ordering in every minutest detail is becoming more and more apparent" (Essays of a Biologist [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923], p. 217). His sentiments were echoed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin,...

  As Catholics, it comes as no surprise to us that the human brain is hard-wired for religion. We believe in a God who created us in His image so that we would come to know and love Him. But for Enlightenment thinkers, who had committed themselves to the "liberation" of human thought from the shackles of religious dogma, the news would not have been welcome at all.   If political society, as Hobbes wrote, abhors a vacuum, the same is true of religious belief. One cannot destroy without creating something else in its place. The new society or...

The first of five U.S. cities will be hit by a new atheist holiday ad campaign this Thanksgiving weekend. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, "No God?...No Problem!" inside buses and rail cars. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, “No God?...No Problem!” inside buses, rail cars and on the side or tail of buses by week’s end. The campaign, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, will then target the transit systems of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to AHA, the holiday ad campaign is the first by a humanist group...

"Magic Mirror on the Wall, who is the fairest one of all?" was uttered by the wicked Queen in the 1937 Walt Disney animated movie 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' Do you remember that poignant little snippet from the movie that became a childhood classic for generations? The nation did not necessarily embrace the evil Queen as a hero but some were on the edge of their seats wondering if the truth or the continued lie would ever come out. The question which many have speculated over was whether or not this movie's focus on the dark side of...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

In 1978, a young scholar in his early 30s named Bill Donohue, working on a book about the ACLU, went to New York City to interview its founder, Roger Baldwin. Donohue asked him why the ACLU was opposed to a moment of silent "meditation" in the classroom. Baldwin responded, "I suppose you could get by with that, but it's a subterfuge, because the implication is that you're meditating about the hereafter, or God, or something."   That revealing moment allowed Donohue to confirm that Baldwin opposed a moment of silent meditation because he feared some student might actually think...

Dead End of Secularism Secularism was to be the wave of the future. Leading secular theorists such as Peter Berger taught that secularism would be the inevitable result of the inexorable march of progress and that its many advantages would simply drive out religion in all of its forms. No serious discussion was possible or necessary. Religion would be deposited unceremoniously on the dustbin of history. But a funny thing happened on the way to the dustbin: secularism has not only failed to triumph over religion, it can’t even reproduce itself. In spite of enormous institutional advantages conferred on it...

French president Nicolas Sarkozy's rejection of the burka and the face veil are "in keeping with the republican spirit of secularism," according to the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, quoted by media. Boubakeur said he supported a proposal by French MPs for a panel of deputies to look at the wearing of the burka "on the condition that they listen to what the experts on Islam have to say". The burka marked "a return towards Islam's past, in line with the preaching and vision of fundamentalists" added Boubakeur (photo)....

Archbishop Francisco Gil Helin Madrid, Spain, Jun 1, 2009 / 08:39 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Francisco Gil Hellin of Burgos, Spain said last week that it has become increasingly evident that both the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI are confronting the “center of the secular world, made up of significant elements of the European Union, the United Nations, and more recently, the United States.” “This center has shown itself incapable of accepting anything that is not part of its own values. And thus, despite scientific proof, the Pope has been irrationally criticized in the name of reason, and the...

Though President Obama may have irked some Americans when he told the nation of Turkey this week that the United States is not a Christian nation, he might have helped believers in Muslim-dominated areas by saying so. Christians overseas, particularly in the Middle East, are often persecuted under the false pretense that the appearingly immoral and indulgent West is a reflection of Christendom. Now, should anti-Christian Muslims take to heart what Obama said recently, perhaps they’ll see the immoral and indulgent West as a reflection of secularism or even liberalism. “One of the great strengths of the United States is...

Outside of politics, sports, and popular entertainment, how many living Germans, or French, or Austrians, or even Brits can you name? Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen. This is particularly meaningful given how different the answer would have been had you asked anyone the same question between just 80 and 120 years ago — and...

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said he was “disturbed” by President Barack Obama’s request to have the symbolic name for Jesus Christ – IHS – covered from a pediment that was visible behind him when he spoke at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall on April 14. “I join many Christians in expressing my outrage at this request,” Fleming said after requesting one minute to speak on the House floor. “This administration has no problem spending money imprinted with the phrase, ‘In God We Trust,’ but won’t have our president speak with any symbol of Christ in public view,” Fleming said. “We begin...