It’s been a headline-grabbing month for Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. First, he agreed to host President Obama at the Al Smith Memorial Dinner. Now, he is going to give the closing invocation at the Democratic National Convention.
10:07 AM 07/16/2012
There is an endless range of activities for which a photo ID is required (e.g., driving, getting on airplanes, purchasing alcohol or cigarettes, getting food stamps). And yet, Democrats are trying to convince the public to oppose voter ID laws by arguing that there are scads of folks who would be disenfranchised if they were required to present some sort of government-issued identification in order to vote.
10:28 AM 07/12/2012
I’m living in California for the summer, and it’s sad to see how much the state is suffering. We’re broke, state income taxes are high, businesses are leaving in droves, the Republicans are completely overwhelmed in the state legislature ... things are not good.
12:07 PM 07/09/2012
In June, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to issue a paper giving the bishops’ opinion on the nation’s economic and budgetary woes (a document expected to be critical of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposals). Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing, Michigan opposed it, saying, "We need to be articulate only in principles, and let the laity make these applications. ... I'm not sure that we [the bishops] have the humility yet not to stray into areas where we lack competence, and where we need to let the laity lead."
12:24 PM 01/30/2012
The American bishops are now reacting strongly against the new Health and Human Services mandate forcing religious institutions to provide health insurance coverage for contraception to their employees. A few thoughts:
9:36 AM 09/26/2011
On September 14, officials from the Vatican met with the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics, to present a proposal for the group’s full reunification with the Church. If successful, the pope will have healed a near-schism and brought 1 million energized Catholics back into the fold.
10:38 AM 07/14/2011
Michele Bachman has been taking some heat lately for the views of the conservative Christian denomination to which she used to belong, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), which believes that the Pope is the Antichrist. People have been understandably concerned about Bachmann’s past affiliation with WELS, especially conservative Catholics who would otherwise be favorably disposed to many of her positions. The stance reminds Catholics of similar stances taken by earlier Protestant groups — the 19th-century Know-Nothings immediately come to mind — that promoted anti-Catholic bigotry and discrimination. It would be alarming if a presidential candidate had a similar antipathy for Catholics.
10:53 PM 04/03/2011
Yet another Catholic diocese has come under a deluge of criminal and civil suits from individuals claiming to have been sexually abused by priests. On February 16, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia agreed to reopen 37 possible cases of child sexual abuse mentioned during grand jury proceedings. The grand jury also recommended charging Monsignor William Lynn with two criminal counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and pressing other criminal charges against three priests and a Catholic school teacher. Several priests were placed on leave of absence after having been accused.
8:09 PM 01/30/2011
In his play A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt described the Church of England thus: “The Church of England, that finest flower of our Island genius for compromise; that system, peculiar to these shores, the despair of foreign observers, which deflects the torrents of religious passion down the canals of moderation.”
11:36 AM 01/21/2011
On May 1, John Paul II is going to be declared a blessed of the Catholic Church — a declaration that he is one step away from sainthood. However, John Paul II was such a dynamic, charismatic figure that many Catholics can’t leave his legacy at “blessed” or even “saint.” The epithets by which different groups of Catholics remember him can help in evaluating the legacy of this great man.
2:24 PM 12/30/2010
Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona has been at the center of a roaring controversy for his decision to remove the Catholic status from St. Joseph Hospital in Phoenix. The hospital may no longer refer to itself as a Catholic institution, Mass may not be celebrated there, and the Diocese of Phoenix will not give it any further support. The decision came as a result of an abortion procedure performed at the hospital, and the repeated violations of Catholic moral teaching that the hospital had perpetrated over the years.
9:52 AM 11/24/2010
A large hullabaloo has arisen after the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, leaked some comments the pope made regarding condom use in an upcoming book. Some media outlets have declared that the pope has now actually changed the Church’s millennia-old teaching on the evil of contraceptives.
10:08 PM 11/21/2010
The Catholic world was rocked this past Tuesday when a new president was elected for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The results were shocking; for the first time since the creation of the conference in 1966, the sitting vice president lost the election for the presidency. In a stunning rebuke, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, the vice president of the USCCB and scion of the liberal wing of the Church in America, was passed over for the New York Time's biggest foe, the bellicose Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York City.
9:50 PM 11/14/2010
The liberal love affair with Islam is perplexing. While liberals tend to hate traditional Christianity for its more socially conservative worldview, they insist on vigorously defending Islam and its adherents. From Jon Stewart's moralizing, to Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg's outrage at Bill O'Reilly, to President Obama's recent droning about the “spirit of tolerance” in the Indonesian Constitution (in spite of Indonesia’s laws prohibiting speech offensive to Islam), we are forever sermonized that there is a gulf between Islamist extremism and the "vast majority" of normal Muslims, whom we would apparently love to have as neighbors and run into at Whole Foods.
8:40 PM 10/31/2010
Minnesota is not San Francisco, and Minnesotans like it that way. It is a state where tradition, family, and religion are valued, and where the airs of yuppy, urban intellectual elitism are scorned. Certainly there are pockets of such attitudes in some parts of the Twin Cities and on a number of university campuses throughout the state, but Minnesotans as a whole are much more meat-and-potatoes. It is a state filled with hard-working, middle-class, blue-collar, labor union people with jobs in agriculture and industry.
