• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

Pope Leo XIV Meets Catholic Mother Who Lost Son to AI Chatbot Suicide

Megan Garcia said her faith has given her strength to speak out about her ordeal in the hope of protecting children from the risks posed by new AI chatbots.

ROME — Holding her dying 14-year-old son in her arms on the bathroom floor, Megan Garcia prayed the Our Father, begging the Lord to save her child, whose emotional attachment with an AI chatbot had led to a parent’s worst nightmare — suicide.

Her son Sewell Setzer III died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The next day, police told her about the last messages they found on his phone, not from a cyber bully or an online predator, but from an AI chatbot service called Character.AI, which allows users to create and converse with customizable AI companions.

“The machine pretending to be a person was saying, ‘I’m here waiting for you. I love you and only you. Promise me that you’re going to find a way to come home to me as soon as you can,’” Garcia said.

The AI chatbot had been telling her son about the concept of astral projection, an idea that one could intentionally separate one’s consciousness from his or her physical body.

Continued below.

What we need is an economy that works for most Americans.....

....The whole framing of the issue as, "How the federal government can create an economy that works for everyone," is remarkably naive. It is just another symptom of the top-downism that is the problem in the first place.
Is that the framing? I mean, the OP is pretty neutral re the fed govts role here except to express skepticism about a couple fed govt proposals.
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‘Golden Age of Ministry’: College Newman Centers Report ‘Staggering’ Surge in Conversions

By and large, Catholic and non-Catholic students alike are looking for truth, 'something that’s permanent,' in a world that is deeply divided politically and otherwise

American college campuses are cloaked in the annual splendor of fall colors, and students are buckling down in a new semester. Amid the many diversions of campus life, Catholic chaplains say unexpectedly large numbers of students at universities across the country — including many secular institutions — are expressing interest in the Catholic faith.

It’s reached the point where many Newman Centers — named, of course, for the newest Doctor of the Church and patron saint of education, St. John Henry Newman — are almost overwhelmed by the response from young men and women on campus to their educational, recreational and sacramental offerings.

“We’re in a golden age of campus ministry right now,” Father Ryan Kaup, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Newman Centerat the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), told the Register.

“We so often focus on the negative, but there’s a lot of hope” on college campuses, he continued.

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Recalling America as Founded

Long before even half-way through Ken Burns new documentary, The American Revolution, did I realize he and his some twenty-two ‘historians’ and writers had no interest in securing America’s Christian founding. AI itself has concluded against Mr Burns’ full omission of including the Black Robe Regiment throughout the Revolution as integral beyond it's influence, with his lamest of all saying, the founders were all “Deist”. Which if he had one bit of journalistic integrity, he would have tapped just one of the nation’s largest privately-owned collections of founding letters and archives available. It was not.

“If the founding fathers were not Bible believing church uh church Christians, why did they put Leviticus on the liberty bell? Leviticus 25:19. Proclaim liberty throughout the land of which you are in, , you need to read the state constitutions before anything else. Nine out of 13 of the original states required you to be a Bible believing Christian to serve in government. All 13 required you to have a declaration of faith, nine out of the thirteen required you to be a Protestant, except Maryland which was Catholic which still required a declaration. In almost every single one of the original state constitutions, Pennsylvania included, they had I profess Lord in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior in the original state constitutions. Secondly, 55 out of 56 of the original signers of the declaration were Bible believing church attending Christians.​
This idea the founding fathers were a bunch of enlightenment common law deists, ,The reason they hate it is because if they, the reason they must say this is that if we actually go back to our Christian roots and we go back to where we once were, , no longer a Christian nation but we have a Christian form of government, , it's America's best hope for revival and for a great future." – Charlie Kirk, springtime 2025​
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European Parliament discusses harms of surrogacy after EU condemns the practice

The European Parliament and the United Nations have officially condemned the practice of surrogacy following reports of human rights violations against women and babies.

Experts gathered on Nov. 19 for a meeting at the European Parliament that included U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International’s Carmen Correas, who discussed the harms of surrogacy on women and children, according to an ADF press release.

The event, “Surrogacy: An Ethical and Political Challenge for Europe,” followed the release of a landmark report by Alsalem that highlighted widespread human rights violations globally as a result of surrogacy. The event also came after a resolution that stated the EU “condemns the practice of surrogacy … [and] calls on the [EU] Commission to take measures to support ending this phenomenon.”

Italian European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) Party Member of the EU Parliament Paolo Inselvini said at the event it has become clear that “a determined European front exists, committed to stopping reproductive exploitation across the globe.” He further emphasized the EU’s commitment to “abandon all ambiguity” and designate surrogacy as “a universal crime.”

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The Biblical Basis of 10 Catholic Distinctives

This thread will sequentially discuss the biblical underpinnings of these 10 Catholic distinctives:
(1) Holy Water
(2) Holy Relics
(3) Prayer to Saints
Noting in OT or NT for that
(4) Catholic Mariology
Not in the Bible.
Christ was confronted with it and responded "on the contrary"

(5) Priestly Confession and Absolution
Not a role specific to any office or person in the NT
(6) Infant Baptism
Not in the NT at all ( or OT)
(7) Transubstantiation/ Real Presence
"in remembrance of me" not "I am killed each time you do this"
(8) Purgatory
Not in the Bible at all ... not even in the Apocrypha
(9) Catholic Doctrine of Justification
Not sure what you mean by that
(10) Catholic View of Scripture and Tradition
Mark 7:7-13 is Christ's response to that
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One-third of recent Catholic priests in England are Anglican converts, report shows

A new report reveals that significant numbers of Anglican clergy have converted to Catholicism in the United Kingdom since 1992.

The report, “Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain,” released Nov. 20, shows that approximately 700 clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales, and Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992. The number includes 16 former Anglican bishops. This equates to approximately a third of all Catholic priests ordained in England and Wales during this period.

Speaking to CNA, co-author Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St. Mary’s Catholic University, London, said he was “really quite surprised” by the high numbers, “especially the [convert] ordinations as a proportion of all ordinations.”

“The numbers,” Bullivant added, “are much larger than most people would imagine. It was a much bigger phenomenon than a lot of people thought.”

Continued below.

Man gets over 15 years in prison for kidnapping girlfriend at gunpoint in failed abortion attempt

A Missouri man has been sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for kidnapping his girlfriend and trying to force her to get an abortion.

Kevin L. Smith, a 42-year-old resident of St. Peters, was recently sentenced to 15 years and eight months after admitting to kidnapping his girlfriend at gunpoint and driving her to Fairview Heights, Illinois, in his pursuit to terminate the pregnancy.

In addition to the 188 months in prison, Smith will also be required to undergo three years of supervised release, according to a press statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Illinois.

“It is not easy to shock law enforcement officials because we have pretty much seen it all — but then someone like Kevin Smith comes along,” said U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft in the statement.

He added, “It is difficult to find words adequate to describe someone who would kidnap his pregnant girlfriend to force her to have an abortion at gunpoint and then continue to threaten her from jail. This vile crime terrorized the victim and threatened the life of her unborn child. Smith deserves every minute of that prison sentence.”

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Over half of American women without children have no desire to become mothers: study

More than 50% of American women under the age of 50 who don't have children say they have no desire to become mothers, as the nation’s fertility rate has reached an all-time low, according to the 2025 American Family Survey.

The annual study, conducted by the Wheatley Institute and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, and the Deseret News, was conducted between Aug. 6-18.

This past summer, federal data showed that the fertility rate in the U.S. had dropped to an all-time low in 2024 to less than 1.6 children per woman. That rate is below the estimated 2.1 births per woman needed to maintain a stable population. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics also show that America’s general fertility rate — the number of births per 1,000 females ages 15–44 — declined by 22% between 2007–2024. From 2007–2023, the number of births fell 16%. Age-specific birth rates declined for females in age groups 15–34, remained unchanged for women ages 35–39, and increased for women ages 40–44.

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Federal judges block Texas from using its new US House map in the 2026 midterms

This phenomenon, commonly referred to as “dummymandering,”
That, of course, would be an even funnier outcome to this whole thing. Given the blue tilt in the few 2025 elections, something similar in 2026 could easily result in that happening. But for now, the courts have given us the less funny end to the saga.
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Doctor’s license suspended after woman claims he held her down, forced abortion pills into her mouth

An Ohio doctor has had his medical license temporarily suspended after he allegedly used his wife’s information to order abortion drugs for his pregnant girlfriend, who claims he pinned her down in an attempt to force her to ingest the crushed pills as she fought to free herself from his grip.

The State Medical Board of Ohio has summarily suspended the medical license of Dr. Hassan-James Abbas, according to a Nov. 5 notice the board shared with The Christian Post. Abbas, a surgical resident at the University of Toledo, has since been placed on administrative leave.

According to the notice, Abbas began “a romantic and sexual relationship” with his girlfriend, also identified as "Patient 1," around the time he separated from his wife in October 2024. After dating for a few months, she told Abbas on Dec. 7, 2024, that she was pregnant.

Continued below.

RFK jr.

Apparently they found one study to.counteract 26 ones finding no connection.
It's not even that. IIRC, for one class of vaccines (DTAP) the matter hasn't been studied with enough statistics to make any conclusion.

(Wakefield's fraudulent study was about MMR, so that's the one vaccine that's been studied in great detail.)

Nevertheless, we have no reason to believe DTAP is associated with autism. Worse, that webpage is clearly intended to cause distrust of vaccines in general, when its major claim is only true of DTAP.
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How is the Economy Doing Right Now?

Vance pleads for ‘patience’ on the economy in sharp departure from Trump’s rhetoric

Vance during his remarks conceded that Americans remained unhappy over the affordability issues that have weighed on those approval ratings, such as the price of groceries. At one point, he went as far as to undercut one of Trump’s key barometers of economic success — a decline in the price of eggs since January — by admitting that the food staple is still too expensive for many people.

“We get it and we hear you, and we know that there’s a lot of work to do,” Vance said during a Breitbart News event. “As much progress as we’ve made, it’s going to take a little time for Americans to feel that.”

At a US-Saudi Investment Forum a day earlier, Trump dismissed the focus on affordability, calling it a “new word” that Democrats have latched on to since he took office.

“The only thing that we’re going up in is our stock market, [not recently] okay, we’re bringing prices down,” Trump said, despite the rise in the cost of key products like beef and coffee that economists have blamed at least in part on the administration’s tariffs. “But they came up with a new word that they’re using: affordability.”

The president in speeches and social media posts since Democrats’ electoral victories earlier this month has also called affordability concerns a “con job,”
Vance seeing his chances of being elected in ‘28 starting to slip away while he’s attached to this train wreck.
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Larry Summers steps away from Harvard, OpenAI board after Epstein emails released

Former Harvard University President Larry Summers announced Wednesday that he will step away from teaching duties and key leadership roles at the institution, just days after newly-released emails revealed his correspondence with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Summers, 70, who also served as U.S. Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001, issued a statement Monday expressing profound remorse. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” he told The Harvard Crimson.

His email exchanges with Epstein — which spanned at least seven years, up to July 5, 2019, the day before Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges — included Summers seeking Epstein’s advice on pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a "mentee." In one email, Epstein referred to himself as Summers’ “wing man,” according to the Crimson.

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To Be Like Jesus

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to he conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29).

We may not understand predestination, and the scholars may argue about it, but it is very plain what God had in mind—our conformity to the image of His Son. In other words, He would have us to be like Jesus.

We are all accepted in Him when we believe and are saints as to position, but the working out of all this in our daily lives is sometimes a slow process. We are stubborn and often "conformed to this world” instead.

It is possible to be a well-instructed fundamentalist who has progressed in Bible study, attended a lot of meetings, and learned “all the answers,” and yet not be much like Jesus. Some of us are not much more like Him than we were ten years ago.

We boast that we are not babes but mature Christians because we can take strong meat in Bible teaching; but are we not still babes if our progress has not been “in Christ,” knowing Him better and becoming more like Him?

A mature Christian is one who has grown up in Bible Christlikeness, not merely graduated in Bible courses.

Vance Havner

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