I wish CF were more well-trafficked, so I decided to do my tiny part by posting more and making more threads. Of course an increase in the quantity of threads will mean a decrease in the quality, as you can tell from the title.

It seems counter-intuitive given that the back of the shirt presses against the backs of chairs when I sit, and against a wall if I lean against one, but the front rarely touches anything. Yet over the years holes have appeared in the front, rarely ever in the back. Of course I asked AI about this, and got an answer which seems possibly insightful yet possibly bogus. But I've been told I need human interaction in my life, so, any thoughts on this? Are anyone's experiences similar? Or different?

FBI Ousts Leader as Patel Fumes Over Attention to Agency Jet Use​

The FBI forced out a senior official overseeing aviation shortly after Director Kash Patel grew outraged about revelations of his publicly-available jet logs indicating he’d flown to see his musician girlfriend perform, said three people familiar with the situation.

Steven Palmer, a 27-year veteran of the FBI, became the third head of the critical incident response group—which includes FBI pilots—to be fired or removed in Patel’s short regime, adding to a year filled with retributive terminations.

Palmer’s position included supervising the FBI’s aviation units, but Patel’s flight schedule was readily traceable through online tracking services and he reposted photos of himself with Wilkins at the event on his personal X account.

The people familiar with the matter said they were baffled as to why Patel might’ve blamed Palmer for the travel details.

FBI directors are required to use government aircraft for personal or business travel in order to maintain secure communications. But public attention of Patel’s weekend outing—fueled by an X post from a former FBI agent turned outspoken Patel critic—comes after Patel had criticized predecessors for personal travel on taxpayer-funded jets.

Patel shared on X an Oct. 30 post from his spokesman, which said articles and opposition to the director’s travel were “disingenuous and dumb” and “bad faith whining.”

[Just a note that, for commercial/philanthropic purposes, Patel styles himself thus as K$H]

I have been praying the Rosary for awhile now but once in awhile I have prayed the St. Michael Chaplet. I did this a few days ago because I wanted a change. I can't decide if it feels more laborious than the Rosary - a part of me feels like it does, but that's a matter of opinion. However, I like how I feel when I pray this - I feel calmer praying this prayer than even the Rosary (I hope that's not because I'm "too used" to the Rosary). There's something I like about this but I feel "guilty" taking a break from the Rosary to pray this Chaplet, but I'm liking it "better" than the Rosary lately. Maybe the novelty will wear off after awhile but I don't know.

I am surprised that this Chaplet is not promoted more - after all, we're invoking St. Michael, what could possibly be insignificant about this? I love this Chaplet. I wish it didn't take as much time to pray (25 minutes to a half hour) but it's underrated IMHO and I don't think it gets the representation and recognition that it deserves.

(It is the Chaplet with 9 sections of an Our Father/3 Hail Marys and then you pray 4 OFs for each of the Angels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Guardian Angel).

A furloughed federal tax attorney is turning his childhood dream into a reality with more time on his hands during the nearly monthlong government shutdown.

Furloughed IRS tax attorney Isaac Stein, 31, is selling hot dogs from his “Shysters Dogs” stand, whose motto is “the only honest rip off in D.C.”

For Stein, running a food stand is a childhood dream, and he’s using the government shutdown as an opportunity to live it out.

“There you are, ma’am,” Stein said to a customer Wednesday. “Don’t forget your soft drink. Thank you so much.”

Continued below.

Belief that a ‘corrupt elite is secretly running the world’ is one of the longest-running and most widespread conspiracy theories of our time

It has become a “byword for a corrupt elite” ruling the world, said indy100, and supposedly boasts Beyoncé, Madonna, Jay-Z and Donald Trump among its members. The name “Illuminati” is “so powerful that it has begun to rule TikTok”, becoming last year’s “most talked-about counter-mainstream idea”.

The story is “pretty compelling” – but “that’s all it is, a story”. And it is one that the “stars themselves have shrugged off or even mischievously fuelled”. While most of the rumours surrounding the Illuminati and its members are fiction, the group was at one time real – though its influence was not nearly as vast and enduring as modern conspiracists claim.

How did the Illuminati start?​

The idea of an “illuminati”, meaning “enlightened” or “illuminated”, has been around since the 15th century, wrote author and academic Chris Fleming. Early groups included the Spanish Alumbrados (the “illuminated”), who believed people could “attain direct communion with God” and thereby gain spiritual enlightenment without traditional worship or the sacrament. Alleged sympathisers include St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, who was questioned by the Inquisition in 1527 over possible links.

Continued below.

A federal judge in Tampa has ordered the arrest of a former Green Beret accused of plotting to invade Venezuela in 2020 after he failed to show up to court for a hearing on whether he should be taken back into custody for violating the conditions of his pre-trial release.

Jordan Goudreau, 49, was arrested last year on weapons smuggling charges tied to the failed coup attempt undertaken during the first Trump administration.

He was released after a few weeks in jail when filmmaker Jen Gatien pledged her $2 million Manhattan apartment where the combat veteran was living as collateral for a bond. In testimony this week, Gatien detailed how the three-time Bronze Star recipient turned abusive, alleging he threatened to harm her and others and sent text messages saying he wouldn't go back to jail.

"I believe he intends one day to leave this country," Gatien said, noting that Goudreau previously lived on a sailboat in Mexico.

Gatien's new documentary, "Men of War," is a largely sympathetic look at Goudreau's slapdash plan to train a mercenary force of Venezuelan army deserters in neighboring Colombia to carry out a cross-border raid that aimed to spark a popular rebellion and remove President Nicolas Maduro.


see also:

Good work, it makes it safer for us all.

So, do you think the Bible is completely without error in everything it touches on?

I do believe the Bible is infallible, but idk if I would go to say that it is entirely without error on matters of history, details, etc. The point is to point people to Christ. It's not meant to be a collection of raw information to mine through.

I do think Scripture is God breathed, but unsure whether I lean towards verbal plenary inspiration or dynamic inspiration.

What about you?

(RNS) — Visiting historically Black college campuses during homecoming observances over the last month, Blexit, a conservative Black group run by the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, has received pushback from some university officials and commentators.

Hampton University in Virginia and Howard University in Washington were among 10 institutions announced as locations of the tour by the group that was founded by conservative activistCandace Owens. The group, which describes its mission as focused on “Faith, Family, and Freedom,” merged with Turning Point USA in 2023.

According to its website, the “Elevate to Liberate” tour started on Sept. 25 at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and will conclude Friday (Oct. 31) at Bowie State University in Maryland and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Continued below.

The head of the Syriac Catholic Church in central Syria has warned that Christianity is disappearing from the country. Speaking in Rome, the archbishop said the church is “dying” and called for urgent international intervention to stop the collapse.

Archbishop Jacques Mourad of Homs, Hama and Nabek said the Christian exodus was a result of the country’s “disastrous political and economic situation,” which has driven tens of thousands to flee Syria in search of safety and stability, the charity Aid to the Church
in Need reported.

At the launch of ACN’s Religious Freedom in the World 2025 report last month, the charity reported estimates that Christians in Syria have plummeted from about 2.1 million in 2011 to around 540,000 in 2024.

Mourad warned that without political reform and security guarantees, the Church has no way to stop the ongoing wave of migration.

Continued below.

Democratic lawmakers, across the country, are hellbent on making the violence of abortion three things: unlimited, unrestricted and unregulated. New York, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Michigan, Colorado, Vermont, and New Jersey have all enshrined destroying our posterity as a state “constitutional” right. They have struck down the most minimal common-sense protections like parental consent/notification, 24-hour waiting periods, and abortion facility medical regulations.

Pro-abortion leftists in Pennsylvania want to do the same thing. They will contort and distort anything to make it possible, even if it means manipulating tragedy to bolster their trickery. In a recent hearing in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, pro-abortion lawmakers pushed for an amendment (HB 1957) to the state’s constitution to make unlimited, unrestricted and unregulated abortion legal in the commonwealth. (See the extreme nature of some current Democratic legislation in the Keystone state.)

Representative Chris Pielli (D), did what Democrats always do to promote abortion: Exploit rape. “I’m asking all the men if this right [to abortion] should be protected by law ... I keep hearing this from the other side, ‘Why do we need this?’ Without exceptions even for rape, incest and pedophiles. We’re not just talking about grown women; we’re talking about children. I’m asking all the men, fathers, think about this — husbands — think about what that means. Your wife will have to carry a rapist’s child. That’s more Taliban than American.”

Continued below.

I don't know how to feel about this. It is good that finally a leader has the guts to stand up to these evil radicals. It is good that other cases of inhumane treatment is being highlighted. It seems strange that it has taken so long for someone to highlight this in the worlds eyes. With all the attention on Gaza and Isreal we forget there are other much worse situations.

Why was there no protests in the streets or on campuses for the almost genocidal levels of Christian persecution throughout the world.

Trump opens the door for sanctions on Nigeria over persecution of Christians

Lord Jesus, I pray for your will to be done in my life, no matter what that may entail. I surrender my all to you. I submit to your Lordship over my life. I give all my trials and tribulations and concerns over to you, and I trust that you will work them all out for my good, and for the good of others whose lives I touch. I pray we might all follow you in obedience to your commands, and that we might all submit to your will and purpose for our lives, even if it means more pain, more suffering, and more hardships yet to come. For we know you are good, and whatever you allow in our lives, you allow for our good, to conform us to your likeness, and to make us your holy people.

So, what is the hope of God’s calling upon our lives? What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints? And what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe in Jesus Christ?

It is that Jesus Christ (the Son of God, and God the Son), our Lord and Savior, left his throne in heaven, humbled himself, and took on human form so that one day he would become our sacrificial lamb on a cross to take away our sins, but not just to forgive us our sins, but to free us from our slavery (addiction) to sin so that we will now serve him with our lives in walks of surrender to him in obedience to his commands.

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

But it isn’t just that. Our faith in Jesus Christ should go beyond just denying self and dying to sin and walks of obedience to his commands. We need him to give us a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him in every aspect of our lives, and in all the choices and decisions that we make about our lives. For he is now to be our life, and our lives are now to be surrendered to him to do his will in all areas of our lives, and not just on a spiritual level, but in our everyday ordinary lives and things we go through.

For we are not to separate our spiritual lives from our secular lives. Our lives are to be surrendered to the will of God in all areas of our lives and in all of our daily routines. For God – Father, Son Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit – is not to be worshipped just one day a week or in one specific location, but we are to worship him in spirit and in truth all the time, and in every location, and under all circumstances. And we worship him in truth by surrendering our all to him in submission to his will and purpose for our lives.

And his will for our lives isn’t just all the feel good stuff. It isn’t just to forgive us our sins so one day we get to be with him for eternity. But it is the hard stuff, too. It is the trials and the tribulations which we experience which come into our lives to test our faith to see what we are made of. And the testing of our faith is to grow us to maturity in Christ, to make us more like Jesus in character, in thought, in word, and deed. It is to humble us, to bring us into subjection to our Lord in all things, and to make us God’s holy ones.

[Matthew 5:10-12; Matthew 7:13-14; Matthew 10:16-39; Matthew 24:9-14; Luke 6:22-23; Luke 21:12-17; John 15:18-21; John 17:14; Romans 5:3-5; Philippians 3:7-11; 1 Peter 1:6-7; 1 Peter 4:12-17; 2 Timothy 3:12; 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5; James 1:2-4; 2 Corinthians 1:3-11; Hebrews 12:3-12; 1 John 3:13; Revelation 6:9-11; Revelation 7:9-17; Revelation 11:1-3; Revelation 12:17; Revelation 13:1-18; Revelation 14:1-13]

Oh, to Be Like Thee, Blessed Redeemer

Lyrics by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1897
Music by W. J. Kirkpatrick, 1897

Oh, to be like Thee! blessèd Redeemer,
This is my constant longing and prayer;
Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Oh, to be like Thee! full of compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,
Seeking the wandering sinner to find.

O to be like Thee! lowly in spirit,
Holy and harmless, patient and brave;
Meekly enduring cruel reproaches,
Willing to suffer others to save.

O to be like Thee! while I am pleading,
Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy love;
Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling,
Fit me for life and Heaven above.

Oh, to be like Thee! Oh, to be like Thee,
Blessèd Redeemer, pure as Thou art;
Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;
Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

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Needing a Spirit of Wisdom
An Original Work / November 2, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Seems like there is not a lot of biographical info about Calvin, compared to say other notable christian theologians like Edwards, Wesley, Luther etc.

How much is known historically about him. Has anyone ever attempted a biography?

What is a Confession of Faith and what purpose do they serve?

Hi, it's been awhile since posting at CF regularly. Taking into consideration I'm a visitor to this forum and not wanting to "Stir the pot" as it were. I'd sincerely appreciate input on the current climate of Christian nationalism within Catholicism in the U.S. Frankly I'm sicken by the far right in the Evangelical churches and I'm too conservative for the progressive churches so I'm at a loss at where I might find a home church. Friendly input would be highly appreciated.

A church I attended many years ago, had on its members role several thousand families. It was an average sized church building, hard to say what it would hold numerically - perhaps a thousand people at most. But I don't recall it having a lot more than maybe a few hundred out at the services I attended. I was kind of stunned to learn how many families were connected to that congregation. But my quetion is doesn't this make each service potentially very changable fellowship-wise in terms of whose attending each week. Clearly not everyone on the members role came to church every Sunday, how often some attended I don't know, but they were still connected to that congregation I suppose even if they hadn't been there in months or years.

Also some I suspect might have been going to a house / home group and not attending the weekly services regularly.

By contrast my early childhood was going to a mission hall, where perhaps there was 50 - 100 at most at a service (the hall would not have held more than 100 people) So it was mostly regulars, with occasional new faces.

What I am getting at is - in churches that have that many families connected, can one end up feeling at times, is this same church I attended last week, because there is a sudden change in who is there?

Bishop Jose María García-Maldonado celebrated a Mass Nov. 1 outside the Broadview facility in Chicago where immigration advocates allege federal authorities inhumanely treat detainees.

Maldonado, an auxiliary bishop in Chicago, and a group of eight spiritual leaders sought to bring Holy Communion to detainees and were not admitted. Mass organizers said they followed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s guidelines to obtain access and submitted the request weeks in advance.

An estimated 2,000 Catholics attended the outdoor Mass including Sister JoAnn Persch, 91, a Sister of Mercy and longtime advocate for immigrant rights in the Chicago area.

Persch said in previous years she was granted access to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and brought communion to detainees, but access has ceased. Obtaining access initially took time when she first began visiting the facility a decade ago, she said.

Continued below.

I just did all mine this morning. I’m not big on the time changes twice a year.

Reviews are in: Heritage Foundation thumbs up; Rubio thumbs down

Conservatives are fighting among themselves over the far-right commentator Tucker Carlson’s decision to interview the antisemitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes on his podcast, where the two men decried conservatives who support Israel.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, defended Carlson after the episode, saying Carlson “remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation”.

Fuentes thanked Roberts for the [support] in a reply on X, citing his “courage in standing up for open discourse and defending Tucker against the Israel First Woke Right”.

On the podcast, Carlson called out Republicans including Senator Ted Cruz, the former president George W Bush and the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, for being “Christian Zionists” who have been “seized by this brain virus”.

“I dislike them more than anybody,” said Carlson, the former Fox host whose podcast has skewed further to the right during the second Trump term.

In remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition after the podcast aired on Thursday, Cruz said: “Now is a time for choosing. Now is a time for courage … If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and their mission is to combat and defeat ‘global Jewry’, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil.”

Cruz also said he had seen more antisemitism on the right in the last six months than he had seen in his entire life, claiming it was a “poison” and that the party and the country were “facing an existential crisis”.

In recent weeks, reporting revealed that a group chat of young Republicans included a host of antisemitic comments, and texts revealed a Trump nominee – since withdrawn – who said he had a “Nazi streak”.

Fuentes went further on his views in a video after the podcast. “Do us all a favor,” he said. “We are done with the Jewish oligarchy. We are done with the slavish surrender to Israel, the wars, the foreign aid, the policing of antisemitism, the Holocaust religion and propaganda.”

---

Just to make it clear to the people eager to confuse the issue. This is not about free speech. Neither Cruz nor I are calling for Tucker to be 'taken off the air' or that he shouldn't be allowed to interview Nick Fuentes. It's about the choice to use one's own free speech to point at and deplore antisemitic speech, or the choice to go along with it or ignore it.

Please keep my brother Alex in prayer. He's greatly ill with damaged kidneys and is on dialysis. He's having trouble eating food and keeping it down and as a result lost a lot of weight. Pray for his healing and salvation.
Please pray for Aiden that the Lord would open his eyes and his heart to the gospel. That the Lord would heal his father wounds and take down the barriers he's put up in his heart. That the Lord would reveal Himself as the perfect Father who won't turn away from his as Aiden's father did. That he would be protected from the enemies lies and discern the truth about the Lord. That the Lord would place other Christians in his life to bear witness to the Gospel. That he would be forgiven and repent.
Please pray for Josh. That the Lord would open his eyes to the lies the enemy has used to hold him. That the Lord would grant him repentance so that he might turn to the Lord.
That God would be glorified in all.

EWTN Reporting

Catholic U.S. Army veteran, Will Thibeau, explains how the U.S. Army's decision to cancel all religious support contracts for Army chapels disproportionately impacts Catholic soldiers.


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Lady: Are you the police?
Elwood Blues: No, ma'am, we're musicians ... We're on a mission from God.