Free Republic

In his address to the Italian Confederation of Cooperatives Saturday, Pope Francis employed muscular language in speaking about money — while acknowledging its importance to business. “Money,” he said, “is the devil’s dung.” “It is not easy to talk about money,” Francis said. Quoting Saint Basil the Great, the Pope said: “Money is the dung of the devil! When money becomes an idol, it rules over a person’s choices. And then it ruins a person and condemns him, turning him into a slave.” The Pope called for “creative imagination” to find new methods, attitudes and tools to combat the “culture...

The first woman bishop in the Church of England could be in the Gloucester diocese, a senior clergyman has said. The archdeacon of Cheltenham's comments came during an open meeting where some 70 people shared their views on what qualities the new bishop should have. The Venerable Robert Springett said he felt the likelihood was "really pretty high" as the diocese could now pick the best person regardless of gender. The Right Reverend Michael Perham, stepped back as bishop in August. He had been due to retire in November. He was interviewed by the Metropolitan Police investigating two allegations of...

It’s hard to tell if the near-constant stream of millennial-centric political think-pieces are perpetuating or reflecting growing curmudgeonly fears about the future of the country. Maybe it’s a little of both, and Fox is probably observing within its competency when it pegs more than a handful of us as “deluded narcissists” – but it appears there’s room for some political optimism among all the moral panic and the reign of the religious right. With millennial religious and political attitudes in flux compared to our predecessors, the upcoming years could be the Christian left’s big moment. Which isn’t to say the...

A billboard at the Village Mall in Auburn, Ala., features five smiling kids beneath a quote from Adolf Hitler: "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future." According to Lamar Advertising's Montgomery office, the billboard was rented out by Life Savers Ministries, based in Opelika, Ala. Hitler's quote traces back to his speeches of the '30s, and has historically been tied to the Nazi youth programs. The billboard went up Friday and will be taken down Tuesday, per LSM's request. "We are pulling the billboard and certainly never intended to cause confusion. "We are a children’s organization and had...

The Church of England says all its dioceses have voted to let women serve as bishops, leaving just one major hurdle to changing centuries of church practice. The issue has long divided the Anglican Communion, a Christian denomination with more than 80 million adherents worldwide. …

“Actions to stop terrorists who’d utterly annihilate America and delight in massacring our innocent children? Darn right I’d do whatever it takes to foil their murderous jihadist plots – including waterboarding. Whatever one thinks of my one-liner at the NRA rally about treating evil terrorists the way they deserve to be treated to prevent the death of innocent people, it’s utterly absurd for MSNBC to suggest that I could put our beloved troops in harm’s way, but we’ve come to expect the absurd from that failing network. If you want to talk about what really harms our troops, let’s talk...

The Boy Scouts of America has revoked its charter agreement with a Seattle church that refused to remove a gay troop leader after the organization withdrew his membership. A Boy Scouts attorney told Rainier Beach United Methodist Church last week that it no longer could host troops under the Boy Scouts name. The church has stood by Geoff McGrath, 49, a Seattle software engineer and Eagle Scout, after his membership in the organization was revoked last month, setting off an impasse between the church and one of the country’s most popular youth organizations. …

On a sunny weekday morning just east of downtown Los Angeles, a crowd of about 75 people rallied outside the LA County/USC Medical Center. They toted signs with slogans like “Healthcare is a Human Right” and “Salud Para Todos” (“Health for All”). “How can we say we live in a just and humane society,” said one speaker, “without providing for the sickest and most vulnerable among us?” Los Angeles, with its massive low-income population and largest concentration of immigrants anywhere in the country, may be the epicenter of the continuing uninsured crisis in America. Somewhere around one million county residents...

Well, that didn't take long. As my colleague Edward Malnick reports, the first gay Church of England priest – a canon, no less – today married his boyfriend. Canon Jeremy Pemberton, 58, a divorced hospital chaplain and father of five, wed his long-term partner Laurence Cunnington, 51. We're not told where, but obviously it wasn't in an C of E church. That's against the law. But they may well be able to have their marriage blessed in church because that's only "against the rules" as opposed to illegal.Campaigners predicted that Canon Pemberton would be the first of many. I think they're...

Trinity College Dublin is to remove the bible from its crest, it has been there since 1592. They will also change the color scheme on the ancient crest to avoid a clash with Ryanair’s corporate image. The world famous college is set to be rebranded as ‘Trinity College, the University of Dublin’ in a strategic plan to be launched next year. The Irish Times reports that it is not only the name that will change at the university, home to the Book of Kells. Religious symbolism has also been removed from the college’s ancient crest at a cost of almost...

A group of Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders and advocates pressured top House Republicans to vote this year on overhauling immigration in a series of private meetings on Wednesday. With legislation stalled in the House and prospects dimming, proponents argued that action is a moral imperative and offered the unique, united front of Catholics and evangelicals imploring the House to move ahead. Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle called it an "historic moment" and said they "reaffirmed that every day of delay, the consequences are separated families." The participants, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they received neither assurances of a...

At a panel discussion on CPAC’s main stage Friday, libertarians and social conservatives agreed that while they share some core beliefs, they remain at odds over the issue of same-sex marriage. Tom Minnery, president and CEO of CitizenLink, said there are many things that social conservatives appreciate in the Libertarian Party’s platform. “Libertarians have led the way in helping us understand the need to cut back wasteful government and to get government out of our lives,” Minnery said. “But we also find this in that party platform: Government does not have the authority to license personal relationships. Consenting adults should...

It's an oft-repeated message that religion and LGBT bashing go together like santorum and anal sex, but a new survey finds that is not the case, after all. According to a new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), titled "A Decade of Change in American Attitudes about Same-Sex Marriage and LGBT Issues," not only have attitudes changed drastically in favor of pro-LGBT rights, but religious bias has also been overstated. The religiously unaffiliated, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly support teh gheyz (73 percent), but so do majorities of Jewish Americans (83 percent), white mainline Protestants (62 percent), white Catholics (58...

The culture war may be lost and religious liberty might not be that far behind, according to a new survey from LifeWay Research, the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Seventy percent of senior pastors at Protestant churches say religious liberty is on the decline in the United States, and 59 percent of Christians believe they are losing the culture war. Eleven percent considers that war already lost. The survey results are staggering – indicating grave concerns about the moral direction of the nation from both the pulpit and the pew. Ten years ago we were talking about who...

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Diarmuid Martin, has said that some people in the Catholic Church may be homophobic. The teaching of the church could be used “in a homophobic way”, he told RTE. He said that the Church had to be very careful that this was not done in the forthcoming debate on the same-sex referendum. […] “Anyone who grew up in Ireland would have told jokes that were pointed at the gay community; at Travelers; it is part of the culture we grew up in, but we have to grow out of it,” he said. He said church...

With just a few clicks on an ancestry website, I recently traced my own U.S. immigration story to 1650 - just 30 years after the Mayflower's landing - when my nine-times great grandfather, John Whitlow, stepped off a boat into what would later become Virginia. Undoubtedly, he did not have permission or a visa from the Rappahannock Indians, so truth be told, he was an "undocumented" arrival. Considering the complexity of my own family tree, alongside my experiences growing up in central Texas, I have to ask myself: How should I respond as an evangelical pastor to the current immigration...

Dear Consistent Life, It was unwise as well as detrimental to CL’s reputation for justice, for you to publish your comment on the acquittal in the Zimmerman case. [Their lastest newsletter, featuring the Zimmerman Aquittal article, found at Link] Its assertions are, at best, unproved, and at worst, examples of the very prejudice and bigotry which is deplored in the article. Permit me to introduce you, perhaps for the first time, to some of the facts of the case. "Racism is the most obvious; it seems likely that Zimmerman perceived Martin as a threat because he was a young black...

How Clergy Helped a Same-Sex Marriage Law Pass By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN July 15, 2011 Early in the week that ended with New York enacting same-sex marriage, the Rev. Anna Taylor Sweringen stood in a hallway just outside the State Senate chambers. She wore her clerical collar and held a sign saying, “Equality now.” Around her gathered ministers and rabbis of similar sentiment, all in Albany to lobby and pray for the right of gay couples to wed. As Ms. Taylor Sweringen looked down the corridor, she saw the mirror image of mobilized clergy members, all irreconcilably opposed. One held...

Welp, it's that time again. Time for the "United Muslim-Christian Forum" a.k.a. the "Muslims of America" from Islamberg to go all Interfaith/Co-Exist/Universalist/Pluralist on us in Binghamton, NY. This time, they'll be repeating last year's Interfaith-arific gathering which was described as the "1st Annual celebration of the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary." From their press release:In this upcoming joyful holiday season, where love and reverence for Jesus, born of the chaste Mary, is widely celebrated by Christians the world over, the United Muslim-Christian Forum (UMCF) is embarking on its 2nd annual event as a time for Muslims to acquaint those...

President Obama has switched tactics in pushing health care reform -- he's now urging faith leaders to support health care reform as a moral and ethical duty. The religious left has, of course, fallen in behind him. Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a leftist Christian advocacy group, visited Lou Dobbs Tonight on Monday. He said of health care: "...right now, we have a system that is fundamentally broken. So many people are hurting, they're left out, left behind, even if they have insurance, they can't afford good health. The system, the broken has to be fixed. How to best...