Weekend Edition -- March 13-14

NCR sits down with the lesbian couple whose children are being denied attendance at a Catholic parish school in Boulder. The couple explained they agreed to speak with NCR because they wanted to clear up misconceptions in the media and specifically wanted Catholics to better understand their situation.

Pope Benedict XVI was implicated in the deepening sex abuse scandal for the first time late Friday following disclosures that he was involved in the transfer a priest who had reportedly forced an 11-year-old boy to have sex.

Director Martin Campbell's new film, "The Edge of Darkness," is a blessing of sorts for Academy Award-winning director/writer/actor Mel Gibson. Aside from its entertainment value, the film provides a study of Gibson several years after the religious epic he directed, "The Passion of the Christ." One could say that Gibson as actor and director and producer has been walking on the edge of darkness for sometime.

With the same openness with which the church is at last coming to terms with the abuse cases, it is now time to deal with one of its essential structural causes, the celibacy rule. Courageously and emphatically, the bishops should propose this to Pope Benedict XVI.

Dividing people into hermeneutic camps has become a favorite tactic of conservative commentators and some bishops, especially those who most want to downplay the idea that the council altered the teaching or attitude of the church in any significant way. Others, however, see the categories as artificial and overstated, attempts at marginalizing as extreme anyone convinced that Vatican II ushered in important changes.

My life has been largely spent at home, caring for my family. It is a small world, but a rich and complex one, for all its short distances from stove to bed and bathtub to couch. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to these writers -- they are women -- who observe the contours and appreciate the significance of the daily and the domestic.

The beleaguered diocese of Scranton, Pa., has a new bishop, a native son who wasted no time in his first news conference in setting a tone distinctly different from that of his predecessor. Msgr. Joseph Bambera has been handling the day-to-day running of the diocese since the abrupt and early retirement of Bishop Joseph F. Martino in August.

Mother Mary Clare Millea last month sent out the first wave of letters to U.S. women religious communities being visited this spring as part of a three-year Vatican study, officially called an Apostolic Visitation.

An earth-hugging environmentalist fad or the next industrial revolution? In 2002 Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich., began an undergraduate degree program in sustainable business. Duquesne University in Pittsburgh has instituted a master’s degree program in sustainable business. Dominican University of California offers a master’s degree in sustainable enterprise.

The proposition that liberal Catholicism is dying has been offered from time to time, for decades now, often in a way that reminds one of the schoolyard scuffler more interested in the fight than in any point being made.

Mission Management Sick patients want to be treated by the best-trained doctors and nurses available. But is that enough or do patients need pastoral care as an integral part of holistic health care? While most hospitals offer spiritual care to their patients, do patients really need professionally trained and board-certified Catholic chaplains? One organization thinks so.