A Vatican diplomat has credited Pope Benedict XVI with “a cleansing of the episcopate”, saying that he removed many unsuitable bishops during his pontificate. “This Pope has removed two or three bishops per month throughout the world because either the accounts in their dioceses were a mess or their discipline was a disaster,” said Archbishop Read more
Catholic guilt has been laid to rest and even most Mass-going Catholics no longer feel guilty about sexual sins, according to research in the United Kingdom. While a poll of 4437 adults detected no evidence that Catholics feel more guilty about sexual sins than other religious people, it found that religious people in general feel Read more
More than 30 years of a one-child population policy makes it hard for Chinese Catholic men seeking wives. According to official media, there will be 30-40 million more marrying-age men than women in China by 2020. If every woman decides to marry, there will still be one in every five men who fails to find Read more
Young Americans of Spanish descent are turning away from the traditional Catholic faith of their parents and moving to Protestant churches, according to a Gallup poll. “A majority of Hispanics in America continue to identify as Catholic, although the Catholic percentage among Hispanics appears to be decreasing and the youngest Hispanics in America today are Read more
A United Nations committee has taken the United States to task for failing to pursue and prosecute clerical sex abusers. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged the US to “take all necessary measures to investigate all cases of sexual abuse of children whether single or on a massive and long-term scale, Read more
A think tank of religious brothers in the United States says they are an invisible group in the Church, but that allows them the freedom to be ordinary men performing an extraordinary ministry. In a country where the number of Catholic brothers fell from 12,271 in 1965 to 4477 in 2012, representatives came together from Read more
Most young American Catholics believe the Church’s teachings on sexuality and birth control are “out of date” and find Mass attendance an onerous obligation, according to a new survey. The online survey by the Barna Group covered 1296 Christians aged 18-29, including 536 “who had experience attending a Catholic church prior to age 18.” Among Read more
Germany’s Catholic bishops have decided that Catholic hospitals should provide the “morning-after” pill to rape victims “as long as this has a prophylactic and not an abortive effect”. But some Catholic doctors, who say the bishops relied on inaccurate medical information, question the assertion that this pill can function solely as a contraceptive. The bishops Read more
Britain’s senior Catholic clergyman, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has stepped down after three priests and a former priest accused him of inappropriate behaviour towards them in the 1980s. The four, from the cardinal’s archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, complained to apostolic nuncio Archbishop Antonio Mennini days before Pope Benedict’s unexpected resignation. The allegations were then Read more
Hong Kong’s retired Cardinal Joseph Zen has accused Vatican officials of “a policy of appeasement and compromise” that allowed Communist China’s control of the Church there. Cardinal Zen said Pope Benedict XVI set appropriate policies, but “his work was wasted by others close to him, who did not follow his line”. “Saying ‘others’ I mean Read more