Just Catholic is a Catholic perspective on the news -- especially when the church itself becomes the news -- from Phyllis Zagano. If we talk about religion, we must talk about the way we live it. It’s not only relationship with God, it’s relationship with ourselves and with each other.
Well, it had to come out sometime. The current front-runner in the Republican presidential primary race, Newt Gingrich, is a Catholic. He used to be a Lutheran. Then he was a Southern Baptist. He converted to share his third wife's Catholicism in 2009.
Seatbelts, everyone. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
The webcasted November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held the excitement of a gathering of accountants discussing actuarial tables. You can catch reruns on the USCCB website.
Even so, the 300 or so bishops, most over the age of 60, seemed to enjoy their Baltimore sojourn.
A while back, Cardinal Walter Kasper said bishops have two arms: the priesthood and the diaconate. But a few U.S. bishops have interrupted their diaconal formation programs and are not training new candidates during this academic year.
Will there be others? Why now? Can we expect a cadre of one-armed bishops?
I know you know about Moammar Gadhafi's death. Who could miss the news? The major players rushed to the world stage with their opinions. The Vatican issued a statement.
Wang Yue died around the same time as Gadhafi. What have world leaders and the Vatican said about Wang Yue?
Election time is rolling around. Time for everybody to get religion.
Or not.
When Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress introduced Texas’ Republican Governor Rick Perry at a gathering of Christian conservatives October 7, he called Perry “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ.”
Maybe I missed the memo, but what kind of logic makes abortion part of humanitarian aid packages? A recent New York Times' editorial "Humanitarian Aid for Rape Victims" argues that U.S. foreign aid should pay for abortions.
And I thought that was called genocide.
What we may remember most about the 10th anniversary of September 11 in New York is that nothing happened. Nobody blew up the George Washington Bridge. Nobody flew a botulism-spraying crop-duster over Midtown Manhattan. Nobody set off mustard gas in the middle of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
It was an otherwise ordinary Sunday in the City. Except half the town was scared to death.
What might baldly be called the Vatican Thought Police are after Theological Studies, the 71-year-old journal for professional theologians that has 2,848 subscribers in 90 countries. They’ve made noises about some of the journal’s essays, apparently forcing it to print a rebuttal to one of them.
There is a cold wind blowing out of Rome. Has anyone noticed that Catholic theologians are running for the secular hills?
It's August. The close of this year's round of conventions has freed hotels for vacationers seeking respit from the every day. Folks at home on rainy summer afternoons are off to the movies. Both hotels and movies may bring up issues we'd rather not recall.
Not long after the Irish government's report on the Cloyne diocese smashed into the public eye, the Irish Prime Minister delivered an eloquent speech before the Irish Parliament in which he decried "the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism … the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day."
The Vatican's response is delayed. It seems the pertinent Vatican officials are on vacation.
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