Providing foster care is off the cards at present for a Catholic couple in Massachusetts. They say their religious beliefs are behind a ban on them participating in their State’s foster care system. Fighting the ban, Mike and Catherine “Kitty” Burke (pictured) turned to liberty group Becket Law who have filed a federal lawsuit on Read more
Catholic teaching on sexuality needs a new perspective, says German Bishop Helmut Dieser. “Same-sex feelings and love are not an aberration, but a variant of human sexuality,” he says. Homosexuals have a right to church support and blessing. Dieser (pictured), who is the spokesman on abuse issues for the German bishops’ conference, says the current Read more
As David Marr reminded us in his 2012 Quarterly Essay, Political Animal: the Making of Tony Abbott, Abbott’s Catholicism was groomed by the highly charismatic and worldly Emmet Costello, the priest he met as a 16-year-old. It went on to flourish under the tutelage of Bob Santamaria. Abbott was and is on a mission from Read more
The Roman Catholic Church will allow priests all over the world to grant forgiveness for abortion. This announcement came from Pope Francis at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy – a holy year dedicated to forgiveness. When the holy year concluded on Nov. 20, Pope Francis made permanent the permission that he had provisionally Read more
A Dominican sister whose comments at a US Catholic school about sexuality ignited a storm has cancelled speaking engagements and has gone on leave. On March 21, Sr Jane Dominic Laurel, a Nashville Dominican sister, told students at Charlotte Catholic High School that studies have shown that gays and lesbians are not born with same-sex Read more
As Pope Francis reaches out to Catholics across the globe to re-energise the Catholic faith, the vast majority of Catholics, world-wide, disagree with Church teaching about contraception, divorce and abortion, but agree with traditional marriage. These are some of the findings of a world-wide poll commissioned in 12 countries, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Read more
The archdiocese of Washington, DC, has accused the Obama administration in the United States of engaging in a “conscious political strategy to marginalise and delegitimise” Catholic teachings on contraception “by holding them up for ridicule on the national stage”. The accusation is in a lawsuit in which the archdiocese contests the administration’s intention to force Read more
The third and final installment in a series on social justice in Catholic social doctrine: When the Italian Jesuit Father Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio (1793-1862) coined the term “social justice” in the middle of the 19th century, he probably could not have foreseen its mention in an 1894 curial document and a 1904 encyclical, nor the Read more
A campaign by a pseudo-Catholic group from the United States to promote condoms to Kenyans has been condemned by the country’s Catholic bishops. The group called Catholics for Choice says its billboard and newspaper advertising campaign gives “an authentically Catholic message”. The “Good Catholics Use Condoms” advertisements show a smiling couple with the wording: “We Read more
A public opinion poll in the United States has shown a significant gap between what the Catholic Church teaches and what American Catholics actually believe. Asked if they believe the pope is infallible when he teaches on matters of morality or faith, only 40 per cent of the total sample (and 45 per cent of Read more