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Faith & Parish

Mercy sister president: Arizona Catholic hospital, bishop in discussion

by Joshua J. McElwee

After a report Friday stated that a Catholic hospital in Phoenix had its official status revoked, the Mercy sister said the hospital is in a "good faith discussion" with the bishop.

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Bishops' staffer: 'Lamb of God' changes immediate

by Joshua J. McElwee

The changes to the "Lamb of God" during Mass came about after the Vatican said a 2007 document approved by U.S. bishops conflicted with church law.

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When Vatican II came to the Bronx

Joe Ferullo  |  Jun. 19, 2009

Part One of Two parts

To this day, I'm no good at math. I blame Vatican II.

In the spring of 1968, I was in fifth grade at Immaculate Conception Grammar School on Gun Hill Road in The Bronx. I was struggling with long division, as taught by the "New Math" imposed back then on all junior high school students. With "New Math," it was not good enough to get the answer right -- you also had to utterly understand the theory behind the answer. In fact, it was better to get the theory right and the actual answer wrong.

That was, by happenstance, also a very Roman-Catholic-church-way-of-thinking about nearly everything. It was an outlook that served the church well for hundreds of years -- until suddenly, with Vatican II, it did not. And in 1968, in the spring, Vatican II came to my working-class neighborhood in The Bronx. It would change my church and it would change me. Ultimately, it would keep us together.

Prop 8 has Catholics divided at the parish level

Joe Ferullo  |  Jun. 16, 2009

Opinion
Researchers will tell you: it takes a lot to stir American Catholics out of their pews and into engagement with their church and parish. Most people are content to sit through Mass, grab a donut on the way out, and get moving with their Sunday.

One hot topic changed all that on a Sunday last November in my Southern California parish: the battle over Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage ballot initiative supported by the Catholic Church and eventually approved by voters.

First a little recent news: the Los Angeles Times noted in an editorial that Prop. 8 continues to divide the state. The locus of that lingering anger is state now Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George -- who's had the poor luck to rule both in favor and against single-sex marriage.

Early last year, George ruled legislators couldn't ban same-sex marriage on their own. But when voters did just that via the ballot, George then sided with them -- ruling the will of the people should not be overturned by court fiat. So now both sides in the debate are going after him.

Shy bishop's career buffeted by abuse scandal, Katrina

Bruce Nolan Religion News Service  |  Jun. 16, 2009

NEW ORLEANS

Conventional wisdom holds that history requires years to render judgment on leaders, but this much is sure of New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes: The two greatest catastrophes ever to befall the Catholic church in New Orleans both detonated on his short watch.

Hughes' seven-year tenure opened with the firestorm of a national sexual abuse scandal and ended in painful recovery from the most destructive hurricane ever to hit New Orleans.

Rebuilding a parish, pastor comes to love people more

Tom Roberts  |  Jun. 12, 2009

Jersey City, N.J.

Our Lady of Czestochowa Church was packed for the 12:30 Mass on Mother's Day. Four families waited at the rear of the church with their infants who were to be baptized. In the congregation, there were dozens of young families with young children and scores of young singles.

Fr. Tom Iwanowski looked out familiarly on a congregation whose primary membership is made up of people between the ages of 25 and 50, a demographic that most religious leaders would covet. In little more than a month he would be moving on from this community where he had arrived 14 years ago, at the request of the previous archbishop of Newark, with the simple mandate to "go and change the direction of the parish."

Change it he did.

Myers, da Cunha discuss problems, promise of Newark

Tom Roberts  |  Jun. 9, 2009

The Archdiocese of Newark, like many other sees, is going through a period of transition and reorganization. Financial problems, demographic shifts and continuous waves of new immigrants create particular problems as well as opportunity for the church in Newark.

Archbishop John J. Myers and Auxiliary Bishop Edgar da Cunha discussed these and other issues confronting the archdiocese during a nearly hour long interview May 7 at the archdiocesan offices. Sitting in also was James Goodness, director of communications for the archdiocese.

Following is an edited version of the exchange.

NCR: tLooking at these broad trends across the country, including demographic shifts and the rest, are there new models emerging, both in terms of ministry, lay involvement and that kind of thing? Discuss the process you've been going through here that has involved a lot of collaboration as I understand it. The church isn't what it was 40 years ago. Where are we in that?

Carving out a spiritual home

Tom Roberts  |  Jun. 8, 2009

CHEVY CHASE, Md.

If the local parish is the hub of Catholic life, then members of intentional eucharistic communities might be like citizens of the suburbs -- close enough to still identify with the city but far enough out to avoid a lot of the noise and confusion.

And like the suburbanite who might answer Kansas City, Denver or New York to the question “where do you live,” some community members find “Catholic” an easy designation for their spiritual home when the reality might be more complex.

Newark: Immigrant church is its history and future

Tom Roberts  |  Jun. 2, 2009

NEWARK, N.J. -- The Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in downtown Newark, one of the largest in the country, is a magnificent testament to the Catholic presence in this beleaguered city.

The grand, block-long sweep of its Vermont granite, which includes a cathedral rectory, is visible through a large round window in the office of Archbishop John J. Myers. He refers to the cathedral during an interview as "one of the great churches in the Western Hemisphere."

It is all at once a sign of constancy as well as a symbol of a church of another era, of a previous Catholic age, of an earlier immigrant experience. These are not the days for big brick-and-mortar dreams. This is the time of a new immigrant church made up of the poor, and often undocumented, from all over the world. The globalized church takes on an urgent reality in these Newark streets, scarred by America’s racial sins and the ravages of urban poverty.

Making parishes engaging and vibrant

Tom Gallagher  |  May. 27, 2009

Mission Management

If the United States’ 30 million former Catholics were their own denomination, their church would be larger than the Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians. Combined.

The situation is most stark in the Northeast, where the total number of Catholics is dropping in each state between 5 and 20 percent. Parishes are closing. Weekly Mass attendance has reached new lows. Most former Catholics have “just gradually drifted away,” according to a recent Pew poll. Without immigrants, the total Catholic population would be in decline.

Communion, coffee and a sausage biscuit

Patty Mccarty  |  May. 27, 2009

I slip my hands into the wrist straps of my new Nordic walking sticks and head for a chapel a few blocks from the house that has held my life for 40 years. The morning is full of blue sky, sunshine and chilly March breezes.

Yellow and white daffodils sway in almost every yard. Yellow blossoms like stringy four-pointed stars cling to slim forsythia branches. Delicate white blooms of Bradford pear trees seem to have come out overnight.

Essay: Pittsburgh Catholics

Timothy Kelly  |  May. 27, 2009

As a historian, I’ve studied three generations of Pittsburgh Catholics: grandparents, parents and the students I teach. They’re good people, loyal, devout and engaged -- and each cohort different from the next. The greater finding is that even in the 1950s, American lay Catholics were ahead of the church, meaning the still-to-come Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which added legitimacy and energy to their impetus for reform.

Pages

Baltimore pastor speaks his mind in homily on same-sex marriage

by Arthur Jones

After reading a letter against Maryland's Civil Marriage Protection Act, the priest received a standing ovation for a homily voicing support of same-sex unions.

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Minnesota nonprofit for farmers loses grant for ties to groups opposing marriage bill

by Zoe Ryan

The Land Stewardship Project, which assists beginner and rural farmers, lost a $48,000 grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development despite having no position on same-sex marriage.

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Cardinal Burke: Vatican II betrayed by breakdown of church discipline

by Francis X. Rocca, Catholic News Service

Abandonment of internal church discipline over the past half century has undermined the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, said one American cardinal at the synod.

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Blogs and Columns

Jesuit seminary director to head Oakland diocese by Dennis Coday NCR Today
Small communities offer a path to 'renewing the priestly heart' by Brian Roewe NCR Today

Sisters' Stories; read more

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May 10-23, 2013

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