Free Republic

Eighteen years ago, this fellowship of Evangelical and Catholic pastors, theologians, and educators was formed to deepen the dialogue among our communities on issues of common concern, to explore theological common ground, and to offer in public life a common witness born of Christian faith. Since our founding in 1994, we have addressed, together, such important public policy questions as the defense of life, even as we have proposed to our communities patterns of theological understanding on such long-disputed questions as the gift of salvation, the authority of Scripture, and the call to holiness in the communion of saints. We...

One of the great losses to Western Culture is the increasing refusal to accept that there is a Natural Law to which we may commonly refer. This is especially problematic in pluralistic and secularist societies like the post-Christian West where reference to the sacred text of Scripture is not considered authoritative by many.Hence, it has been the long practice of the Church, even before secularizing trends to base her witness to the truth not only on Scripture but also on Natural Law. The recourse to such a basis for discussion is now largely impossible for us, as most secularists have...

Here is the heart of President Obama's official Christmas message: "This is a season for millions of Americans to be together with family, to continue long-held holiday traditions, and to show our gratitude to those we love. And along the way, some of us might even watch a little basketball or eat some Christmas cookies, too." Ah yes, cookies and basketball: that's what Christmas is about for the President. Oh, and yes, those "long-held holiday traditions." More here.

November 18, 2013. (Romereports.com) During his daily morning Mass at the Vatican, the Pope talked about the dangers of secularism. He talked about the subtle ways in which Christians begin to negotiate their values and faith. The desire to be like everyone else, said the Pope, often leads to 'adolescent progressivism.' The Pope said this can lead to 'human sacrifices' that are even protected by laws. The Vatican's new Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, also attended the Mass. POPE FRANCIS “God is faithful with His people, even though His people are not faithful. With a spirit of children, may the...

Polish Nobel peace laureate Lech Wałęsa on Monday called for a new “secular Ten Commandments” to underpin universal values, addressing a summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Warsaw. “We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow,” he said in an opening speech kicking off the three-day summit. … Besides universal values, the international community needs to focus on the economy of tomorrow, he said. …

The twentieth century was the start of the age of high technology. The technological advances of our age have eclipsed all previous generations. It was the nineteenth century that evoked an unprecedented spirit of human optimism. The Enlightenment concluded that man no longer needed the God-hypothesis to explain his origins and purpose. An optimistic humanism was born that promised a coming utopia. Education, science, and technology would produce the acme of evolutionary development. Peace would prevail and poverty, disease, crime, and war would be banished by the modern techniques of government, economics, and education. World War I temporarily burst the...

Most mainstream media stories about women in the growing skeptic/secularist/science education movement (the boundaries between the three are pretty porous) usually begin with articles and videos asking, "Where are all the women?" But people within these circles know that there are actually a lot of female leaders, and the real woman problem is sexual harassment. As Rebecca Watson, a major writer and speaker on the skeptic/atheist circuit wrote in Slate last year, the amount of sexual harassment aimed at women over even the tiniest suggestions of how to make the movement more female-friendly is absolutely stunning. ... This sort of...

A move by Quebec’s ruling Parti Québécois to ban public workers in the province from wearing ostentatious symbols has drawn fire from other Canadian leaders, and even created an internal division within the group. The so-called “Charter of Quebec Values” forbids state employees from wearing large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps or Muslim headscarves to work. …

If Bret Baier ever needed an excellent excuse to get out of something, he had one on Sept. 10. The Fox News host was booked to interview Washington, D.C.'s Cardinal Donald Wuerl at an event hosted by the John Carroll Society. But when he signed up for the event organized by Catholic Beltway lawyers, he had no idea that the president of the United States would choose this particular Tuesday night for a prime-time address about a possible military strike in Syria. It was whirlwind of a news day, to say the least. But Baier didn't back out. During the...

France’s first “secularism charter” for schools is to be revealed by the country’s Education Minister Vincent Peillon on Monday. Although the precise details of the charter’s content are not yet known, it is expected to remind pupils of the strict secularist principles of France’s education system and make clear that they are not allowed to miss certain classes for religious reasons. All public schools in France will be required to display the document from Monday onwards. Peillon said the charter would help to instill the “values of the Republic” in the country’s young people, in an interview with French weekly...

Here’s an ugly truth you can drop in the punchbowl at your next office party – most Western men and women, including many who consider themselves conventionally religious, treat human beings as subhuman. They accept without reflection theories of human life that reduce us to brainy animals, or let us play at being gods. These theories render suffering meaningless and train us to live as cowards; they teach us to despise the weak but train us in habits of laziness and avoidance; they speak the language of progress while in fact encouraging the lowest of human instincts; they claim to...

Can the family die, as a legal and social institution in Italy? Such a question could not even have been asked 40 years ago in this country, but in that time, the social and demographic landscape has changed dramatically, and the unthinkable is going on around us. For some time I’ve been thinking about and reading various opinions on how the destruction of marriage as a legal and social institution in the formerly Christian West, has forwarded the aims of that nebulously defined, but apparently all-powerful, class of people I’ve come to call, simply, “the Statists” or “the Secularists.” It’s...

Wake up, conservatives -- and Christians. We're getting our rear ends handed to us, and we'll continue to if we don't do a better job of fighting back. I'm not just talking about electoral politics. Liberal and secular activist groups are as aggressive as ever and winning, energized and enabled by this most radical of administrations -- and equally so by deer-in-the-headlights conservatives. The latest episode in this particular series of unfortunate events involves the Y's rolling over to the relentless bullying of pro-abortion activists to evict Students for Life of America from its facilities. These self-depicted arbiters of tolerance...

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia is pictured following an interview in Rome in October 2012 (CNS photo). First Things has posted an address, "Wisdom, Christian Witness, and the Year of Faith", given yesterday by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput at the National Shrine, Washington, D.C., as part of the National Shrine’s Year of Faith lecture series. It begins with a reflection on the 1800-year-old diary of a Roman emperor: Marcus Aurelius held absolute power in a corrupt age. Yet despite that, he chose to seek what is true and right and lasting; and he disciplined his own life accordingly....

There is no doubt about it, the times,they have changed. The United States of America has an official new state religion and it is godless Secularism based upon the Humanist Manifesto (press here to read it). Godless Secularism elevates the human individual into a god and makes the worship of the individual the centerpiece as it shunts the common good to the periphery as well as forcing authentic religion and her true God into the private and personal never to influence the public. This new state religion influences in powerful ways the politics of this land and many politicians...

If you've ever had the great fortune of seeing the entrance to a mosque, you'll have noticed that there are two doors: one, the main, huge, is for men, another, small and lateral, for women (as in the picture below of the East London Mosque). Apparently we need "right-wing groups" now in England to protest sexism, because the Left totally condones it. The recently-formed England National Resistance (ENR) felt outraged that the North West Kent Muslim Association’s mosque in Crayford High Street has separate entrances for men and women. Particularly offensive is the fact that this was once a church,...

ISTANBUL — Police officers attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators on Friday in Istanbul’s Taksim Square with water cannons and tear gas, sending scores of people, protesters and tourists alike, scurrying into shops and luxury hotels and turning the center of this city into a battle zone at the height of tourist season.

Jerome Corsi discusses his newest book, The Bad Samaritans today on the Joy Tiz show at 2 pm PDT/5 pm EDT. He'll tell us about the Bad Samaritans and their nefarious plans to drive Christianity out of our society.

People like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion (Amazon USA) , (Amazon UK) , and Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great (Amazon USA) , (Amazon UK) , et al, when attacking “religion”, play on various ambiguities. They create ambiguities in their choice of terms and then these ambiguities are convenient for them. The first instance of ambiguity is the use of the term “religion”. It puts together all sorts of people and doctrines which may have very little in common. To give an analogy, the flat earth theory is undoubtedly a theory of physics. It says something...

A man holds a large U.S. flag before an Oct. 14 Mass and Pilgrimage for Life and Liberty at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. (CNS photo/Leslie E. Kossoff) In a previous article, “The Puzzle of Religious Liberty,” I brought before readers a rather vexing quandary. Somehow our hearty affirmation of religious liberty—which would seem to be a good thing—ends up producing a secular state that uses its powers to enforce a secular agenda that contradicts our religious liberty. How does it happen? In order to limit governmental interference in our religion, we...