President Obama met recently with New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the US Catholic bishops’ conference, to discuss issues that have created tension between the administration and the Catholic hierarchy, reports The National Catholic Reporter. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops feels at odds with the Obama administration and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia told students last Read more
After the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine had delivered its criticism of Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God by St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, theologians and boards of theological societies in the United States contested the content of the criticism and protested the manner of its formulation (NCR, Read more
Conservative Catholic and Christian groups are condemning New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to ban clergy-led prayer at the 10th anniversary commemoration of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Catholic League and the Family Research Council, say the event shows a prejudice against religion and ignores the central role religious groups played in the city’s 9/11 response. Read more
The Vatican newspaper has backed Archbishop Timothy Dolan in a debate over over a new sex education curriculum in New York City, which is supported by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a means of combating early and unintended pregnancies, especially among Black and Latino youth.
The initiative has been criticised by Dolan for, among other things, potentially usurping the role of parents in shaping the moral values of their children.
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New York Bishop of Brooklyn Nicholas DiMarzio has signalled a new era in Church-State relations by calling for sanctions consequent to the gay marriage bill passing. DiMarzio has called on members of his diocese “to not bestow or accept honours, nor extend a platform of any kind to any state-elected official in all the parishes Read more
On Friday, New York joined the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont and Washington DC as places where same-sex marriage is legal in the United States. Opponents of same-sex marriage have vowed to fight back and outlaw gay marriage as they did in California and Maine. The National Organisation for Marriage (NOM) has Read more
Archbishop Timothy Dolan defended comments he made on his blog that the rate of sexual abuse among New York City public school teachers is ten times higher than that among priests. In his blog post of March 18 Dolan described a meeting with a man at Denver airport who would not shake his hand and Read more
Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, said he believed the church’s reaction to the sex scandal was rigorous and strong and he wants to see “zero tolerance for wayward priests”. In a interview on CBS, Dolan said the acts themselves and the decades-long cover-up are hard for him to bear or understand. “In some ways, Read more