NCR Today is the group blog of NCR. Each member of our diverse team of bloggers writes on different topics, including the politics of the church and secular society (and the interaction between the two), culture, management of the church and more.
An estimated 1 million Latinos live in the Archdiocese of Chicago, but the archdiocese's human service arm, Catholic Charities, is failing them, according to a report from the Chicago NPR station.
Critics, including immigrant advocates, a state senator and at least one Chicago priest, say Catholic Charities should be doing more to help impoverished Latino families.
The world suffers global recession, enormous inequity, hunger, deforestation, pollution, climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc. To those who say we’re not really making progress, many might point to the fact that at least we’ve eliminated slavery.
But sadly that is not the truth.
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a request by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport to continue a stay on releasing sex abuse documents.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg denied the diocese's application to continue the stay until the nation's high court decides whether it will review the case.
Filmmaker Roland Joffe, twice nominated for Oscars, including for "The Mission," which dealt with leftist Jesuit priests, is the church's more conservative members, the Assocaited Press reports.
Opus Dei is financing the film, the Assocaited Press reports, but "the British director has 'creative space' to make the film he wants."
Bishops John D'Arcy and John Quinn discuss Obama at Notre Dame over at America.
Exactly 400 years ago today, on Aug. 25, 1609, the Italian astronomer and philosopher Galilei Galileo showed Venetian merchants his new creation, a telescope -- the instrument that was to bring him both scientific immortality and, more immediately, a whole lot of trouble.
To mark this anniversary, NCR is re-releasing an Podcast interview Tom Fox did with Beatrice Bruteau, a Christian contemplative, passionate scientist and philosopher, in 2007. They speak about the creative impulse behind the evolutionary design of the universe.
It's an Encore NCR Podcast: Science, fear, God and the mystical
Readers who have been following this story, Okla. bishop no longer faces people at Mass (and there have been a lot of you) will want to check out this story just posted to our Web site: Vatican downplays report of planned liturgical reforms
Archbishop Chaput counsels patience in the health care reform effort and no one can deny that patience is a virtue. But, there are nonetheless many difficulties with his statement that jump off the page.
First, he quotes from a moving testimonial from a couple with a Down’s Syndrome child. The mother says she is worried about the “public option” and what that might mean for her child: Would the government see the same value in the expensive treatments for her child that he pediatrician sees? But, that is the wrong question. The pediatrician doesn’t pay for the child’s health care, the family’s insurance company does. So, the proximate analogy is a different one: Would the government see the same value in the expensive treatments as the health insurance company does? This is easy. A federal plan will not have profit as a motive. The insurance company does not place those expensive treatments on the plus-side of its ledger.
Archbishop Chaput Opposes ‘Fast-Tracking’ Health Reform
Bourgeois Calls Failure to Ordain Women ‘A Scandal’
Pawtucket Pastor Resigns Amidst Abuse Charges
E.J. Dionne has a great column today, filed in Australia, where that country’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, gives credit to both Presidents Bush and Obama for their actions in averting an economic collapse. The bailouts of the financial sector and the automobile industry, the stimulus package, and the quick passage of Bush’s final budget earlier in the year, averted what could easily have been a repeat of the Great Depression. Dionne correctly concludes that Obama will reap little political benefit from this great fact. “But because the cataclysm was avoided, this is an invisible achievement,” he writes.
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