Caritas is scrambling to find housing for thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing to neighboring Lebanon because of ongoing violence between Syrian forces and armed rebels. More than 1,000 people have made their way to the town of Qaa in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon March 5. They are struggling in the region’s near-freezing temperatures. Read more
The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols will tell Catholics on Sunday that marriage has an “instinctive understanding” and that changing the definition to include homosexuals would be a “profoundly radical step” that would strip it of its “distinctive nature. The warning will be read in 2,500 churches during Sunday Mass, and will also be co-signed Read more
In 2001 there were only 26 seminarians in England and Wales. Things are now changing. With more than 200 seminarians, the England and Wales Bishops’ Conference has confirmed the number of men training for the priesthood in England and Wales is at its highest level for nearly twenty years. This is the first time seminaries Read more
The Vatican leaks scandal rolls on according to John Allen in the NCR, with an Italian newspaper publishing two confidential letters concerning the unpopular and powerful Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The leaked letters expose a failed effort by Bertone to take control of an important Catholic university and hospital system. The aftermath, also Read more
Take your lead from liberal Catholics is the Obama administration’s message to the US Catholic bishops on the contraceptive coverage debate, according to Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Dolan says White House aides urged the bishops to listen Catholics who have accepted the administration’s plan, such as the editors of America magazine. Writing on his blog, Dolan Read more
The sexual abuse scandal is not over according to the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin. Speaking on 60 Minutes program, Martin said “There’s a real danger today of people saying, ‘The child abuse scandal is over. Let’s bury it. Let’s move on,’” he told CBS report Bob Simon. “It isn’t over. Child protection and the protection Read more
Madness, a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right, and a redefinition of reality is how Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland described proposals to redefine marriage so as to allow same-sex unions. In a hard-hitting column in the Sunday Telegraph, O’Brien went on to ask: ‘If marriage can be redefined so that it Read more
US Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both Catholic, are in disagreement with each other over John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on the separation of church and state. Santorum says the JFK 1960 speech delivered while campaigning to be the first Catholic US president, made him feel sick. Gingrich on the other hand, Read more
Arianna Huffington, publisher of the Huffington Post is under fire for allowing a column to be published on her website that compares Catholics to pedophiles and attacks the Eucharist as a “barbaric ritual.” In a letter dated Tuesday a group of conservative leaders allege Huffington is “complicit in bigotry” for publishing columnist Larry Doyle’s article about Read more
The Archbishop of Westminister, Vincent Nichols, is standing by his support for special Masses provided for homosexuals in the archdiocese. Nichols has shrugged of recent criticism that Masses for homosexuals provide a platform for dissent from Church teaching, and he reaffirmed the Westminister diocese’s pastoral provision for gay Catholics. Rejecting complaints that the gatherings in Read more