Free Republic

I was born in Baghdad, but all my ancestors before me, including my parents, where born in Mosul and neighboring cities in Northern Iraq. Even now when I speak Arabic it is still with a Moslouy dialect. For many years, no matter where I was living or what I was doing, the answer to “Where are you from?” was one of identity: “Ana Maslouy.” I am a Mosulian. And I am, all the way down, in spite of my thoroughly Americanized personality—such is the deep and dual identity of immigrants.Born to a Chaldean Catholic mother and a Syriac Orthodox...

We often hear it said that it is simply wrong to insult the faith of 1.3 billion Muslims. Why, then, isn’t it wrong to insult the faith of 2.2 billion Christians? It’s done every day, and sometimes the insults are hard to take. Christians are understandably upset when art exhibits feature crucifixes immersed in urine or portraits of Mary covered with dung.It doesn’t require a Ph.D. to figure out why the secular word condemns insults to Muslims but countenances insults to Christians. It’s because the latter won’t come after you with machetes and assault rifles. If Islam were truly...

Let’s face it, there is one route the finance guys have yet to try. You have to pray to a saint! Am I right?We had a problem. A BIG problem! Exactly, it was all about money. We were staring two mortgages in the face. Changing houses is easy if your bank goes along with the idea. We had found our new dream residence. Signed on the dotted line and then our bank refused us a bridging loan. We needed badly to sell our old house.I mused, stared at the sky. My wife was more practical.“We will ask St Anthony,”...

Another Illustration That Tolerance Does Not Extend to Faithful Catholics By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn another show of selective tolerance from the cultural radicals, there comes the following story, as related in Crisis Magazine. Here are some excerpts from the article:In their zeal to protect students from any comments or opinions that may hurt their feelings, many professors [in this case at Marquette University] have created “safe spaces” in their classrooms—controlling all conversations in an effort to ensure that no one is ever offended …[Professor Cheryl Abbate]  made it clear that the classroom was not a [place for students doubting] the value of same-sex “marriage.” Such...

A man I know was a top executive at a major American media company, one of the biggest and most influential in the world. A young man came into his office one day asking to display a rainbow sticker with the words “safe space.” This was a decade ago and this man, a faithful Catholic, felt confident he could demur without reprisal though he could see the veiled threat of being “outed” as less than gay friendly, as a homophobe.But, in these post-Brendan Eich days, it is doubtful my friend would feel as safe to say no because things...

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus used to call it “the parish paper,” a gentle barb at the pretensions of the self-described “paper of record,” but also, I think, a subtle pastoral hand extended to those who think they get all the advice they need when they look in the mirror.Yes, I’m talking about the New York Times, which just ran a discussion group on dropping the celibacy requirement for Catholic clergy. It was a “usual suspects” sort of panel, with the balance one would expect. Of 7 panelists 4 were in favor of married priests, one argued both for and...

The clean sweep at the Komen Foundation is finally complete. A few days ago Komen founder Nancy Brinker finally lost her job as CEO. It took a while but they finally got rid of her, the woman who watched her sister suffer and die from breast cancer, who dedicated her life to eradicating the disease, who created one of the most successful global health charities in the world. They removed her for the crime of trying to defund Planned Parenthood. She’s being replaced by a woman some say had a hand in developing Obamacare and who has never run a...

Nine years as chaplain of an 800 bed state mental hospital taught me that one can be mentally ill and highly intelligent. Talking with the patients often was more interesting than talking with their psychiatrists. Mad men are not mindless. They just do not distinguish between delusion and fact. Chesterton summed this up by aphorism: “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” This explains why it is often hard to distinguish university faculties from mental wards, save for the latter being kept under...

Jesus reached out to harlots. He did not reach out to their harlotry. Jesus reached out to hypocrites, often with a rhetorical fist to capture their attention. He did not reach out to their hypocrisy. He reached out to tax collectors, those half-traitors to their nation. He did not reach out to their treachery.I am imagining a parade down Main Street of Anyville.It’s the typical American parade. Some people are tootling on flutes, braying out almost-G on the trumpet, or banging the big bass drum. A group of high school girls in short skirts dance and twirl their batons....

“When will the Catholic Church come into the twenty-first century?” As a Catholic theologian, I often hear this question posed by non-Catholics and Catholics alike. One of the most important questions facing the Church today, it implies a set of issues that are known to all: same-sex “marriage,” contraception, and divorce (to name only a few), which Pope Benedict XVI has called “the canon of issues.” Because the teachings of the Church on these issues are at odds with our modern secular culture, non-Catholics—and even many Catholics—are left scratching their heads and wonder why the Church doesn’t finally come...

One day fifteen years ago, I happened to be channel surfing past the Eternal Word Television Network when I was greeted by a momentary flash of heavenly beauty across the screen. Quickly flipping back, I realized that it was a Mass being celebrated in an unusually majestic church with an extensively gilded and marbled interior.Having never seen this church before, I distinctly remember asking myself why today’s churches can’t still be built to glorify God the way this beautiful “old” work of art had been. Within minutes, however, I felt as though a joke too good to be true...

One thing that you can say for ISIS, the Middle-East terrorist army, is that it doesn’t have a recruitment problem. Young men are streaming to Syria and Iraq from all over the world to join the cause. And they come not just from the Muslim world, but also from England, France, Sweden, Australia, and the U.S.Perhaps hoping to put a dent in the appeal of ISIS, some Western newspapers have made much of the expensive stolen watch visible on the wrist of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during his first public appearance at the Grand Mosque in Mosul. According to...

Karla and Jacob began dating in 2009 when they were 42 and 32 years old, respectively. After Karla was diagnosed with lymphoma, and “despite neither of them thinking the relationship had long-term prospects,” both agreed to have human embryos created from their gametes. These were frozen for later use because treatment would, unfortunately, destroy Karla’s fertility. Their relationship was short-lived, yet, Karla’s only chance of giving birth to her own genetic children remained the use of the frozen progeny resulting from this relationship.Jacob objected and the two went to court. This May, the Illinois judge ruled that Karla can...

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the U. S. House of Representatives Minority Leader, and one of the most powerful Catholic politicians in the United States, has recently warned the Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco, to cancel his plans to speak at the June 19 National Organization for Marriage march on the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Calling the event “venom masquerading as virtue,” Pelosi urged Archbishop Cordileone to stay away from the event, and “join us in seeking to promote reconciliation rather than division and hatred.” Pelosi has partnered with other self-described Catholics including California Lt. Governor Gavin...

In a recent interview, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) declared it is a scientific fact that “human life begins at conception.” He also said that “leaders on the left” who “wag their fingers” about the “settled science” of global warming are hypocrites when it comes to science, and someone should ask them if they accept the “consensus of scientists that says that human life begins at conception.”Going further, the senator added, “I’d like to see someone ask that question. It’s never asked. And that’s not even a debatable thing, we can actually see that happening. I mean, that is a proven...

My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Aaron Ruse Sr. who was born in Virginia circa 1764. I know the name of his son and his son and his son and so on down to my own father. I know the names of their brothers and sisters. I know the names of their children. I know where most of these family members were born and where most of them died.There is a house in Loudon County, Virginia that is called the John Ruse House, where Aaron Ruse’s grandson John—my great-great-grandfather—lived. I have seen this house.With a little effort, I could find the name...

Continuing their commitment to silence anyone who might stand in the way of their agenda, gay and lesbian groups are now beginning to criticize supporters who are thought to be insufficiently loyal. The most recent case involves Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor, who is married to the University’s president, Teresa A. Sullivan. A man with impeccable progressive credentials, Laycock has been a longtime supporter of gay rights and same-sex marriage—filing an amicus brief in the 2012 Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor that urged the court to extend same-sex marriage benefits to every state in...

Because of these substances, Lance ArmstrongÂ’s cycling victories were taken from him and he was disqualified from further competition; Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire were stripped of their baseball records; numerous congressional hearings were held to assign blame regarding their use. We do our best to protect athletes from these dangerous substances while, at the same time, encouraging women to put them in their bodies.What are these substances? Steroids.Oral contraceptives (commonly known as birth control pills) are steroidal hormones. These drugs manipulate hormones to prevent conception, just as performance-enhancing steroids manipulate hormones to enhance physical size, strength, speed and...

I have always been a believer. Among other reasons, that’s because I think rationality demands it.When I talk about “belief” here, I mean it in a very broad sense, which is not synonymous with “Catholic” or even “Christian”; Sikhs, Hindus and Zoroastrians might all qualify, and I myself was raised in the LDS church and not (according to Rome’s decree) validly baptized until the age of 25. When I speak here of “believers,” I am distinguishing those who are prepared to believe in more than what eye can see, ear can hear or elaborate scientific machine can detect.I wouldn’t...

Distilling some of the ideas in my book on Thomistic angelology, I published a previous column in Crisis on the massive intelligence and powers of angels. The flip-side of these spiritual faculties, as Aquinas points out, is the existence of a dark kingdom, using the same intelligence and power to prevent the spread of GodÂ’s kingdom, get more recruits, and consolidate the powers of evil in the world. In Luke 4:7, Satan declares that power over the kingdoms of the world have been delivered to him, and he offers Jesus a share in this power, if only Jesus would...