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Navis Pictures Producer Jim Morlino was looking for a story for his next film when a friend gave him a book with a story about a little known war in an area of Western France known as the Vendee - a story that he believed would be especially compelling to modern day Catholics. "More than just compelling, the magnitude of the story of the French Revolutionary Government's war against the Catholic Church, and the fact that these events were virtually unknown to most of the world, I found shocking," said Morlino. "How could a war which lasted for years,...

Dave Hunt, an apologist, best-selling author, speaker and radio commentator, died April 5 with his wife, Ruth, at his side. He was 87. Noted for his research on cults, the occult and New Age doctrines, which began creeping into the church during the 1980s, Hunt was renowned for his controversial 1985 best-seller, The Seduction of Christianity (Harvest House Publishers), which he co-authored with T.A. McMahon. A prolific author of more than 40 books with at least 4 million copies sold, many translated into 50 languages, Hunt's other titles include Yoga and the Body of Christ; A Woman Rides the Beast;...

An anarchist group has targeted prominent Roman Catholics in Spain using bombs hidden in boxes of sex toys. Two devices were sent by the anti-clerical Pro Sex Toys group, according to Spain's EFE News One agency, concealed amidst vibrators. They targeted the archbishop of Pamplona, Francisco Perez, and the headteacher of a private school belonging to the ultra-conservative Legionnaires of Christ movement in Madrid. One bomb exploded in a postal sorting office, leaving a member of staff with slight injuries. "Please accept our apologies," the group said in an email sent to an anarchist website at the beginning of last...

Appearing on Monday's NBC Today as part of the Today's Professionals panel discussion, the network's chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman urged the Catholic Church to abandon its opposition to contraception: "Here's one thing I really would implore the Catholic Church to do on a global issue.... poverty without birth control begets more poverty....So this is a chance to take the humility and the poverty and say now we're really going to talk about this in a civilized way and move it forward." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Advertising executive Donny Deutsch chimed in: "Well...

"Walesa said in a television interview on Friday that he believes gays have no right to sit on the front benches in Parliament and, if represented at all, should sit in the back, "and even behind a wall." "They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority," he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. "I don't agree to this and I will never...

A professor at Georgetown University wrote a piece in the NY Times advising Catholics to resign from the Catholic Church in light of Pope Benedict's resignation. Paul Elie is a senior fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown, and he says that Catholics should boycott Mass (a mortal sin) as a way to instigate change, namely selecting a Pope that would introduce radical change. This is just so fitting of a Georgetown professor and the New York Times. Here's some of the most outrageous parts: AT 8 p.m. last night in Vatican City, Benedict...

Rome -- Repeatedly over the last three days, media agencies have asked me to comment on the following question: Did Benedict XVI really resign just because he's old and tired, or was it really because of the sexual abuse crisis, the Vatileaks mess, and the various other meltdowns that have occurred on his watch? My answer has been that it's not an either/or. Benedict may not have quit "because of" the pedophilia scandals or any other specific controversy, but it's hard to believe they didn't play a role, at least as background. One can certainly take Benedict at his word...

In “Queering Schools, GSAs and the Law: Taking on God”--an excerpt from the book The Gay Agenda: Claiming Space, Identity & Justice--a law professor at the University of Manitoba calls for changes in “state-issued law and policy approaches” to ensure that Canadian schools, including Catholic schools, become “queered.” “The most effective approach would call for laws, policies and programs that mandate curriculum and educative responses to transform the schooling experience of all students,” writes Donn Short, who discusses “the reach of the law and the ability of the law to take on what sits as the major social norm and...

Michael Moore got a bad review from at least one upset critic at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards...on Monday. Moore was there to present Best First Film to David France for his doc "How To Survive a Plague," a salute to a protest group that stormed St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1989 over the AIDS crisis. But Armond White, gadfly critic and former organization chair, began heckling him for "anti-Catholic" rhetoric. Moore raised hackles when he recalled how activists at the height of the epidemic...interrupted Mass at St. Patrick's. Moore stated, "I personally like that one. I say that...

Following Pope Benedict XVI's repeated messages denouncing same-sex marriage, more Dutch Catholics are seeking ways to leave the Catholic Church. And one website is helping people to "de-baptize" themselves. According to Reuters, the website ontdopen.nl ("de-baptize.nl") has gained significant traffic this month after the pope took the time in his Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy to condemn gay marriage. "They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves," he said. "The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's...

Almost nothing is known about this play besides ... that the central character, Joshua, is reported to have sex, offstage, with his disciples. That was enough, however, to lead the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights to stage a letter-writing campaign against the production. It was enough, too, to induce someone to call the Manhattan Theater Club with threats to burn down the theater and kill the staff and Mr. McNally. What we are witnessing, once again, is the peculiar combat between freedoms that is repeatedly staged in America. ... There is no essential difference between suppressing the production...

AP Photo/Jim Cole Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of Democratic President John F. Kennedy, speaks during a campaign event for President Barack Obama's re-election in , Thursday, June 28, 2012 at Hart's Turkey Farm in Meredith, N.H.   The Democratic National Convention released a full transcript of Caroline Kennedy's speech to the 2012 Democratic National Convention (as prepared for delivery). Read the full text below:It's an honor to join you tonight for the most important reason I can imagine—to make sure that Barack Obama is re-elected president of the United States. Four years ago, I was inspired by the way Senator Obama...

The Democratic National Committee is raising a number of eyebrows after choosing to proceed with hosting Islamic “Jumah” prayers for two hours on the Friday of its convention, though it denied a Catholic cardinal’s request to say a prayer at the same event. Watch the promotional video, via the Bureau of Muslim Affairs, which is partnering with the DNC for the event. The first two minutes are rather dry, but around 2:04 a muezzin sings the call to prayer with an American flag background, and the video “picks up” considerably:

The author who turned Georgetown University into a horror scene in “The Exorcist” plans to sue the school in church court, charging that his alma mater has strayed so far from church doctrine that it should no longer call itself Catholic. William Peter Blatty, who graduated from Georgetown in 1950, says the “last straw” was the university’s speaking invitation to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius, who addressed graduating public policy students on Friday (May 18), has been criticized by conservative Catholics for approving a mandate that requires many religious institutions to cover employees’ birth control costs. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is for the first time citing Vatican City as a potential hub for money laundering. The State Department's annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released Wednesday identifies the Holy See as one of 68 countries or jurisdictions "of concern" for money laundering or other financial crimes.

In an appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Monday, Georgetown Law student and women’s contraception activist Sandra Fluke told viewers to check out Media Matters for examples of over-the-top conservative rhetoric. When asked by co-host Joy Behar if she had anything to say to her critics, Fluke, who made headlines last because of the attacks and subsequent apology she received from conservative talker Rush Limbaugh, encouraged viewers to check out Media Matters’ website. “Well, I would encourage everyone to go to Media Matters because they have an excellent story on their website that gives a list of the various commentators...

This is the html version of the file http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/statement-Congress-letterhead-2nd%20hearing.pdf. Page 1 Leader Pelosi, Members of Congress, good morning, and thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation. Myname is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third year student at Georgetown Law, a Jesuit school. I’m also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them...

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, explains why she boycotted today’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” “I have decided to boycott the sham hearing orchestrated today by the Republican members of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to trample on the civil liberties of millions of American women who deserve coverage of their legitimate and most basic healthcare needs, including contraception. “The Republican majority refused to allow the testimony of witnesses who represent millions of Catholics, such as...

A defining moment in Mitt Romney's post-pro-life-conversion political career came in his third year as governor of Massachusetts, when he decided Catholic hospitals would be required under his interpretation of a new state law to give rape victims a drug that can induce abortions. Romney announced this decision -- saying it was the "right thing for hospitals" to do -- just two days after he had taken the opposite position. The story begins in 1975, when Massachusetts enacted a law that said, "No privately controlled hospital .. shall be required to permit any patient to have an abortion ... or...

In the sedate and sober world of bankruptcy law, one lawyer's memorandum sticks out like a sore loser. "Across the country the court systems and particularly the Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church," the Nov. 25 filing said. It went on to call one bankruptcy judge "a Catholic Knight Witch Hunter," said one trustee was "a priest's boy" and claimed another trustee is a "Jesuitess." It got worse from there. Hastings lawyer Rebekah Nett also called U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher and other court personnel...