Free Republic

As we prepare for the Feast of the Presentation (Sunday, February 2), I though it might be appropriate to describe a liturgy of the Church that is largely lost to most today, “The Churching of Women.” To some extent it is subsumed in the modern Rite of Baptism with the blessing of the Mother, but it is not what it used to be. We CAN still celebrate this for women who ask, and I often do celebrate it especially when I do extraordinary form Baptisms.The Churching of Women is very rooted int he feast of the Presentation. Biblically this feast...

It was my first night in the U.S. Penitentiary at Lompoc, Calif. Christened “The New Rock” back in the 1930s after the closure of the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz, only the baddest of the bad were sent here. Kidnappers, murderers, thieves, gangsters and mafia men by the dozen have called this concrete structure “home.” snipped The No. 2 rule of prison is you must become a racist. Racism is not supremacy. Racism in prisons and jails across America is not a problem—it is a solution. If a convict publicly supports a supremacist ideology, inmates of his own race will correct...

BRUSSELS, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Canada's foreign minister slammed Tehran on Tuesday for turning a dialogue over a Canadian citizen who died in Iranian custody into "a farce", but added that unilateral sanctions would probably not be effective. Pierre Pettigrew also said there was no improvement in the human rights situation in Iran, and that Canada may press its allies to consider joint pressure on Tehran. The Canadian government has accused Iran's hardline courts of covering up the true circumstances of Iranian-born photographer Zahra Kazemi's death last year in order to protect senior judiciary officials implicated in her murder. "We've...

MARY KAY STILL HOT FOR VILI By RICH CALDER and ERIN CALABRESE August 8, 2004 -- EXCLUSIVE Infamous cradle-robbing teacher Mary Kay Letourneau says she still lusts for her former schoolboy lover after all these years, a former student of hers said yesterday. *SNIP* Letourneau, 42, whose steamy sexcapades with a then-12-year-old Vili Fualaau produced two kids, was released from prison last week after 71/2 years. *SNIP* Letourneau began her taboo affair with Fualaau in 1996 when she was his sixth-grade teacher and a married mother of four. Their tryst was so torrid that they did the dirty deed in...

TEHRAN, Nov 19 (AFP) - France's foreign ministry has has alerted the French judiciary to a case of paedophilia allegedly committed in Iran by a French national, the French embassy here announced Wednesday. In a brief statement, the embassy said that "based on information obtained by this embassy and in virtue of Article 40 of the Penal Code of Procedure, the ministry of foreign affairs on November 14 alerted French judicial authorities to a case of paedophilia in Iran concerning a French national." The code's article referred to in the statement obliges public servants to alert the judiciary to any...

May 14, 2002, 8:45 a.m.The Saudi’s Con GameWhat “special relationship”?By Jerry Taylor audi Crown Prince Abdullah's recent visit to the Bush ranch and the leaked Saudi threat of turning the oil weapon against America prompted politicians and pundits to worry about whether our "special relationship" with the House of Saud could survive the ongoing violence in the Middle East and about the catastrophic consequences that might accrue if it didn't. This "special relationship," however, is a self-serving fiction that has governed American foreign policy for far too long. In short, the Saudi regime has pursued a policy of economic...