Free Republic

The idea of Purgatory as an intermediary state between Heaven and Hell is one of the most misunderstood and occasionally ridiculed aspects of Catholic doctrine. Though it is common for Protestants and even some Catholics to assume that Purgatory has no foundation in Sacred Scripture, that claim is actually false. The need for Purgatory developed from a close reading of Scripture by the Fathers of the Church, and the concept has a provenance stretching back to the earliest days of the Church. Furthermore, it has come to my attention recently that the Orthodox have a similar understanding of the need...

Constantine's great victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge took place on October 28, AD 312. The day before — October 27 — is the date traditionally given for the miraculous vision and dream which Constantine experienced prior to the battle. This vision has been the subject of debate in both scholarly and popular imagination for hundreds of years. But what really happened on that day 1,705 years ago that changed forever the course of human history? As a prelude to the famous accounts of this vision, it should be noted that Constantine also seems to have had pagan...

In an action that spoke far louder than words, Pope Benedict yesterday walked out of an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem after the chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority launched into an anti-Israeli diatribe. The pontiff, on his first day in Jerusalem, did not realize at first that Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, speaking in Arabic, was condemning the "crimes of the Jewish state" and accusing Israel of having "slaughtered women, children and senior citizens." But as soon as he was told the nature of the sheikh's tirade, he stood and left the meeting, which took place at Notre Dame church, before...

At a small Catholic church south of Los Angeles, the pressing moral question comes to this: Does kneeling at the wrong time during worship make you a sinner?Kneeling ''is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin,'' Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, in Huntington Beach, Calif., told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran's anti-kneeling edict.While told by the pastor and the archdiocese to stand during certain parts of the Sunday liturgy, a third of the congregation still kneels.`ACT OF ADORATION'''Kneeling is an act of adoration,'' said Judith M. Clark,...

Freedom of speech is a great thing. Unfortunately, it comes at an unavoidable price: When citizens are free to say what they want, they’ll sometimes use that freedom to say some pretty silly things. And that’s the case with the 12 claims we’re about to cover. Some of them are made over and over, others are rare. Either way, while the proponents of these errors are free to promote them, we as Catholics have a duty to respond.1. “There’s no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me.” People use this argument...