Free Republic

650 U.S. banks will soon be able to offer bitcoin purchases to an estimated 24 million total customers. As part of the deal between enterprise payments giant NCR and digital-asset management firm NYDIG, community banks, including North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank, and credit unions, including Bay Federal Credit Union in California, will be able to offer their clients cryptocurrency trading through mobile applications built by the payments provider. Instead of having to deal with the burdensome regulatory requirements related to actually holding the cryptocurrency for their customers, the financial institutions that opt to make the service available will rely on...

[Barf Alert] Catholic publications join in naming people of the year In naming Pelosi as its focused honoree, National Catholic Reporter cited her “steady and thoughtful service to the nation at a time of extraordinary challenge and for exemplifying, in all its complexity, a public and, in this case, political role in which her Catholicism acts as a kind of moral bedrock.”

Bannon's emerging anti-Francis movement threatens church unity Pope Francis, known for kissing the feet of Muslims, warning about the dangers of fossil fuels, and speaking prophetically on the spiritual death of wall building, has earned a reputation as the anti-Trump. Support independent Catholic journalism. Become an NCR Forward member for $5 a month. What we've learned about Donald Trump over the past two years is that while the president tends to kick down, whether it's freshman Congresswomen or protesting football players, he has largely left the world's most powerful religious leader unscathed. Francis may well have a more formidable foe...

Inspired by Francis commemorating the Reformation on Halloween of last year, Ecumenical events commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation are now coming to a diocese near you! Just a few examples include Grand Rapids, MI, Saskatoon, Canada, Pittsburgh, PA,  Lansing, MI., and Lima, OH. Other dioceses like Orlando. FL and Pueblo, CO already enjoyed their commemorations earlier this year. Far from condemning these events, the USCCB is actually facilitating and encouraging them by posting a “2017 Commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation Resource Guide” on their website. As the post-Conciliar Church leadership moves left at breakneck speed,...

Liberal Catholics are badly rattled by Bishop Thomas Paprocki’s decree that Catholics engaged in same-sex marriage cannot receive the sacraments in his Springfield diocese. So badly rattled, in fact, that… The excitable Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter argues that Bishop Paprocki “should be sacked.” In a column that carried a headline referring to the bishop’s decree as “unhinged” (and “unhinged” is a good word to use here, although not for the Paprocki policy) Winters says that the bishop’s stand “warrants the extreme sanction of removal from office proposed in the motu proprio Come una madre amorevole. As...

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, should be sacked. He issued a decree last week setting guidelines and limits for how the pastors in his diocese treat people in same-sex marriages. The decree is so completely at odds with the direction Pope Francis is trying to take the church, so excessive in its perception of the cultural significance of gay marriage, and so unlike the example of Jesus presented in the Gospels, it warrants the extreme sanction of removal from office proposed in the motu proprio, Come una madre amorevole. Bishop Paprocki's decree states, uncontroversially, that no priest or other minister of the Catholic Church can preside at a same-sex marriage. No...

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Msgr. James Checchio, who recently stepped down as rector of the North American College, on Tuesday was appointed bishop of Metuchen, a diocese in north-central New Jersey. “Touched by a bit of holy fear, I am certainly humbled to become the shepherd of this wonderful diocese, and I look forward to striving to fulfill the demanding task of ensuring that the pastoral charity of Jesus Christ continues to be abundant here in Metuchen,” Msgr. Checchio said at a March 8 press conference announcing his appointment. “I promise you my prayers and my commitment to serve to the...

#CharlieCharlieChallenge is a popular hashtag on Twitter today. According to the BBC Trending blog, it refers to a game which involves balancing pencils over the words "yes" and "no" on a piece of paper. Players ask questions which are supposedly answered by Charlie - a mysterious demon who spookily moves the pencils, if you believe in that sort of thing. The BBC says, "if you believe in that sort of thing" because it does sound pretty goofy: A mysterious Mexican demon moving pencils around at the behest of eleven-year-old Mackynzie, who wants to know if Conor likes her or not. Who...

Many supposed "theological differences" between Catholics and Evangelicals are, I think, founded in semantics rather than in substantial disagreement. For example, when I was an Evangelical one of the periodic arguments I ran across against Catholic moral theology was that the concept of mortal and venial sin is unbiblical. Sin is sin, say Evangelicals, and there's no good in trying to make out some sins as "minor." To us Evangelicals such nice distinctions smelled a great deal like rationalization and looked like an escape clause from the commandment "Be holy, for I, the Lord, am Holy." After all, James wrote,...

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in...

Pope Francis today gave his most spirited and explicit defense of the unborn and society's most vulnerable since his election. The Holy Father was addressing the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and Catholic gynaecologists, currently attending a conference in Rome. Below is my translation of Pope Francis' address, not the official English translation which is yet to be published in full: "I apologize for the delay, because today ... this is a morning too complicated for audiences ... I apologize. 1 . The first point that I would like to share with you is this: we are witnessing today...

Fishwrap’s Call for Papal Yes-Men Posted on 14 September 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf Over at the National Schismatic Reporter (aka Fishwrap), Michael Sean Winters attacked Bp. Tobin for saying that he (Tobin) is disappointed that Pope Francis hasn’t spoken enough about abortion. Winters wrote: Lastly, a note to the nuncio. Unless you want to spend the next few years defending Pope Francis in the face of such criticisms from bishops on your own, [!] the ternas for new appointments must include men who “get it,” men who understand what the Holy Father is trying to do, to change the...

When I began Mass today, I wasn't going to offer a homily. It's not required for daily Mass (but is encouraged); it's good for folks to have some silence to reflect on the Scriptures and on the prayers of Mass; and many people at daily Mass have to get back to work--so I try to keep things moving, yet reverent. But as I listened to the readings, a point came to mind that I decided to share. It occurred to me that what our Lord told people to do, in the Gospel, is directly the opposite to what the so-called...

Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-Saint Joseph. File Photo/CNA. Kansas City, Mo., Jan 25, 2013 / 05:47 pm (CNA).- Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-Saint Joseph announced his discouragement that the National Catholic Reporter has failed to live up to the “Catholic” portion of its name. “In light of the number of recent expressions of concern, I have a responsibility as the local bishop to instruct the Faithful about the problematic nature of this media source which bears the name 'Catholic,'” he wrote in his Jan. 25 column for his diocesan paper, “The Catholic Key”. His comments on...

In early December the independent and very liberal National Catholic Reporter weekly newspaper published a long, carefully reasoned editorial declaring that “The Ordination of Women Would Correct an Injustice.” If the Church were deliberately perpetrating an injustice in the matter of ordination, of course, it would be a serious matter. The NCR editorial was a response to the earlier “excommunication, dismissal, and laicization” of Roy Bourgeois, who as a Maryknoll priest had long and defiantly—and in spite of numerous warnings—engaged in what was officially described as a “campaign against the teachings of the Catholic Church”—he repeatedly and obstinately engaged in...

Sr. Pat Farrell of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (a subsidiary of the Magisterium of Nuns) did an interview with the liberal-leaning National Public Radio. Carl Olson of Catholic World Report deftly dissected Sister’s interview. Let’s see the first part with my emphases and comments.[Don't forget: The LCWR's leadership claim that, since they are not clerics, women religious don't have to stand up for Magisterial teachings in their apostolates. Therefore, they think they can blur and be silent about important moral and doctrinal issues and align themselves through that blurring and silence with a secular feminist agenda or with...

President Barack Obama's pledge to continue the ban on the use of federal funds for abortion and to maintain conscience protections for health care workers in any health reform legislation was welcomed by two officials of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the president of the Catholic Health Association. Speaking with Catholic News Service Sept. 10, hours after Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and a nationwide television audience, Kathy Saile, director of domestic social development in the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, said the president's address offered an encouraging sign that the administration has...

“NCR makes ATMs,” Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher said Tuesday. “And to me this is equivalent to going to your ATM and finding out that your bank that you and your family have banked with for 125 years has, without even talking to you, transferred all your funds to another company.”

When L'Osservatore Romano published an essay this week suggesting that U.S. President Barack Obama's positions on abortion and other life issues "have not confirmed fears of radical changes," it provided the latest confirmation of a glaring difference in tone between the Vatican and the most ardently pro-life circles in the American Catholic church, including a growing number of American bishops. In general, several voices in the Vatican have taken a moderate and conciliatory line on the Obama administration, while several U.S. bishops, buoyed by a network of pro-life activists, have been more pugnacious. The essay, by L'Osservatore's frequent foreign affairs...

On Friday, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed critics of federal funding of life-killing embryonic stem-cell research with this argument: “We’ve had a situation where it’s faith or science — take your pick,” Pelosi said about how the administration of George W. Bush allegedly dealt with the funding issue and other hot-button issues that involve making moral choices about scientific research. “We’re saying science is an answer to our prayers.” Added Pelosi, “We need science, science, science, science, science.” At his Secondhand Smoke blog, bioethicist Wesley Smith demolishes Pelosi’s claim that embryonic stem-cell research represents state-of-the-art science. In fact,...