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The Pope will on Sunday launch a renewed attack on the "moral relativism" that he has blamed for Britain's summer riots.In a message for the 2012 World Peace Day of January 1, Pope Benedict said that neither peace nor justice was obtainable if the objective norms of morality expressed in the Ten Commandments continue to be rejected. His words represent another severe criticism of moral relativism, the humanistic creed that holds there can be no objective standard on which to base morality. They come just months after the Pope told Nigel Baker, Britain's Ambassador to the Holy See, that the...

People who have spent time with him recently say they found him weaker than they'd ever seen him, seemingly too tired to engage with what they were saying. He no longer meets individually with visiting bishops. A few weeks ago he started using a moving platform to spare him the long walk down St. Peter's Basilica.

There is one front page news story that will certainly not go unnoticed: that is, that the Pope is thinking about resigning during the Spring of 2012. Journalist Antonio Socci has confirmed the same in the Italian daily, Libero.  "For now,” Socci writes, “he is saying that this may be true (Joseph Ratzinger’s personal assumption), but I hope the story does not reach the news. But this rumor is circulating high up in the Vatican and therefore deserves close attention. The Pope has not rejected the possibility of his resignation when he turns 85 in April next year.”  Socci recalls...

<p>SINEAD O'Connor sparked widespread anger today after suggesting she would shoot the Pope.</p>

www.catholicnewsagency.com Europe doomed if conscience isn’t rediscovered, Pope says By David Kerr Zagreb, Croatia, Jun 4, 2011 / 02:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Europe is doomed if it doesn’t rediscover the true meaning of conscience, warned Pope Benedict XVI on the first day of his visit to Croatia. “If, in keeping with the prevailing modern idea, conscience is reduced to the subjective field to which religion and morality have been banished, then the crisis of the West has no remedy and Europe is destined to collapse in on itself,” the Pope told a gathering of members from Croatia’s civil society...

(ANSA) - Vatican City - Italian conductor Riccardo Muti is backing Pope Benedict XVI's drive to discourage guitar ''sing-songs'' from Catholic masses. The traditionalist German pontiff has called for an end to the use of pop-inspired religious music that many Catholic churches have used in different parts of the world to attract the faithful. ''It is possible to modernize holy music,'' he once said at a concert at the Sistine Chapel. ''But this cannot happen outside the great traditional path of the past, of Gregorian chants and sacred polyphonic choral music. ''(The Church supports) new expressive means (in music, as...

Bishop William M. Morris / Pope Benedict XVI Toowoomba, Australia, May 7, 2011 / 07:08 am (CNA).- Australian Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, removed from his post earlier this week by Pope Benedict XVI, is not going quietly into early retirement as agreed.And he does not appear to be respecting the usual protocols of confidentiality and discretion that Church leaders normally adhere to in cases of Church discipline. Instead, in a series of interviews this week, the ousted bishop has leaked what he claims is private correspondence from Pope Benedict XVI and compared the Vatican’s investigation of him to...

Pope Benedict XVI / Photo Credit: Mazur Vatican City, May 5, 2011 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI warned members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences that religious freedom is coming under a renewed attack, from forces he compared to the totalitarian powers of the twentieth century. The Pope observed that religious freedom was among the rights that underwent a “systematic denial by atheistic regimes of the twentieth century” such as Communism and Nazism. “Today,” he warned in an address made public May 4, “these basic human rights are again under threat from attitudes and ideologies...

POPE Benedict XVI has urged parents to use proper Christian names when naming their children.The Pope was believed to be speaking out against the trend of copying obscure celebrity baby names.Several Italian celebrities have fallen foul of religious tradition, most notably Formula One boss Flavio Briatore, whose son is called Falco, meaning Falcon.Christian names are an “indelible sign from the Holy Spirit� that help protect family life, the Pope said.Theologian Gianni Gennari said the Pope was “simply asking for seriousness when it comes to baptism�.

Kevin McKenna’s  review of 2010 in The Observer newspaper includes his assessment of Richard Dawkins behaviour during Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK:‘ The Pope’s visit was great but tinged with sadness because it reduced that once-great biologist Richard Dawkins to a rambling and wild-eyed madman hurling foam-flecked adolescent insults at the Roman holy man. I trust someone is giving the scientist his soup and caramelised biscuits as he recuperates. I even hear of a Richard Dawkins care fund. Could someone forward me the address?’Protect the Pope comment: Couldn’t agree more! It was a relief that the BBC cut away from...

A new Dark Age on the horizon?Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics... the vast majority of conservatives of every stripe would agree with this almost non-reported speech made by Pope Benedict XVI on 20 December, 2010.In a speech to Papal representatives from all over the world, the Pope spoke in the context of a the near total collapse in the Western world of any moral consensus rooted in Christian ethics and heritage.In comments aimed directly at the secularization and abandonment of God by the West, Benedict stunned those in a attendance when he stated; "Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy...

Pope Benedict XVI’s book-length interview is certain to spark global attention, and not only for his comments suggesting that condom use might be acceptable in some circumstances. In the 219-page book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times, the German Pontiff spoke candidly on the clerical sex abuse scandal, relations with Islam, papal resignation and the “threatening catastrophe” facing humanity. The wide-ranging interview was conducted by German writer Peter Seewald, who posed questions in six one-hour sessions last summer. The book was to be released tomorrow at the Vatican, but ample excerpts were...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Catholic Online) - Catholics, other Christians, other people of faith and people of good throughout the world continue to mourn and reflect upon the brutal killing of Catholics at Holy Mass in Baghdad last Sunday. However, those associated with the Muslim extremists who perpetrated the evil act continue to spew their hateful and violent rhetoric. We are committed to updating our global readers on the unfolding danger that these threats portend against Catholics and other Christians. Serious times demand a serious response. Asia News has provided excellent coverage of the massacre and its aftermath. On November 3, they...

The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI has received a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Vatican did not release the contents of the message. But the website of the Iranian presidency said Saturday that Ahmadinejad had called for cooperation by "divine religions" against secularism.

VATICAN CITY - Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict's number two on Wednesday for calling homosexuality a "pathology" and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children. The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers on Wednesday. The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal's remarks.

Gay rights groups have condemned the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for claiming that the Catholic church's sexual abuse crisis was linked to homosexuality and paedophilia and not celibacy among priests.Bertone, who is considered Pope Benedict's number two, sparked the controversy on a visit to Chile when he suggested gay sexuality was to blame for the church's child abuse scandals.Homosexual associations in Italy reacted with anger and indignation. The biggest group, Arcigay, called the cardinal's words "shocking and irresponsible". The president of the gay media service, Gaynet, said if senior church officials "feel constrained to dump the blame...

Having criticized particular Catholic cardinals for blaming everything–including the Church’s sex scandal–on “the Jews”, let me now come to the defense of the Pope and of the Church itself on this issue. To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse. The first tradition involves confidentiality, particularly not exclusively the confidentiality of the priest with regard to the penitent. But there is also a wider spread tradition of confidentiality within the Church hierarchy itself. Second, there...

...of laicizing two priests after lengthy canonical trials right in the middle of pushing to streamline a complex Vatican bureaucracy so as to facilitate more speedy outcomes. Per Fr. Z: •Again, the abuse took place decades ago.•He was suspended.•There was a canonical trial.It was referred to Rome, the CDF, because it concerned a case of the confessional. •It was determined that he should be dismissed from the clerical state.•The priest appealed.•The appeal process was drawn out for several years because the laws and canonical process of these clerical cases was being overhauled.•Card. Ratzinger was the one who led the...

LOS ANGELES – The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday. In the Aug. 27, 1963 letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders. The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request...

The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child’s mother—thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture. Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in...

Friday March 26, 2010 NYTimes vs. Pope Benedict: Paper Seeks to Implicate Pope in Abuse Cases Vatican told of one case when abuser priest was dying, over two decades after incidents occured By John JalsevacMarch 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The NYTimes has set its sights firmly on Pope Benedict in its front page coverage of the fallout of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, which has been reignited in recent weeks and months after revelations of abuse by priests and religious in Ireland and Germany. In recent days the U.S. paper has published a series of articles...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue criticizes an op-ed article and a news story in the New York Times about Pope Benedict XVI's role in the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy: In yesterday's Times, columnist Maureen Dowd said that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, "ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys." Wrong. Her own newspaper said it has no evidence that he even knew of letters that reached his office in 1996 about this matter. Today's edition of the Times has...

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger tried to persuade Pope John Paul II to mount a full investigation into a cardinal who abused boys and young monks, one of the Church’s most senior figures revealed yesterday. But Ratzinger’s opponents in the Vatican managed to block the inquiry. As the future Benedict XVI put it: “The other side won.” The pervert cardinal was the late Hans Hermann Groer, removed as Archbishop of Vienna in 1995 following sex allegations. The source for the story is Groer’s successor in Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, an intellectual whom some commentators have tipped as a possible future Pope.The source...

The following, therefore, are three footnotes to understanding Benedict's record on the sexual abuse crisis. 1. Not the 'Point Man' First, some media reports have suggested that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger presided over the Vatican office with responsibility for the sex abuse crisis for almost a quarter-century, from 1981 until his election to the papacy in April 2005, and therefore that he's responsible for whatever the Vatican did or didn't do during that entire stretch of time. That's not correct. In truth, Ratzinger did not have any direct responsibility for managing the overall Vatican response to the crisis until 2001, four...

The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn't tell you   By Phil Lawler | March 25, 2010 2:55 PM Today's front-page story in the New York Times suggests that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), under the direction of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, failed to act against a Wisconsin priest who was accused of molesting scores of boys at a school for the deaf.Is the story damaging? Yes. Should the Vatican have acted faster? Yes. Should the accused priest have been laicized? In all probability, Yes again.Nevertheless, before assigning all blame to...

The New York Times this morning printed an essay from German author Peter Schneider, who raised some pointed questions about the Church in the pope's homeland: Pope Benedict should also recognize how precarious the Catholic Church is in Germany. Like Americans, Germans have already had to cope with a general loss of trust in public institutions. First there were the bankers, with their insane bets and bonuses. Then the politicians, who couldn't stop the bankers. Now there is a loss of trust in the church. But unlike in America, religion in Germany is already weak. In the former Communist east,...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican on Thursday angrily attacked the media over its reporting of sexual abuse of children by priests, saying there was an "ignoble attempt" to smear Pope Benedict "at any cost." The editorial in a Vatican newspaper came on a day abuse victims protested near St Peter's Square to demand the pope open files on pedophile clerics and defrock "predator priests," and a cardinal spoke of a "conspiracy" against the church. "The prevalent tendency in the media is to ignore the facts and stretch interpretations with the aim of spreading the picture of the Catholic Church...

No doubt you’ve heard the story about how the Pope refused to “defrock” (a term not found in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church) a priest who abused 200 deaf children. It’s been on television news because it was in the New York Times (remember that network news decides what to cover based on what’s in the Times); and, of course, whenever the Times in involved, the truth is hard to find. The story is actually an old one. The priest in question, Father Lawrence Murphy, abused his victims between 1950 and 1974, while assigned to a school for...

1st Question: Why does the pope continue to assert that what he calls "holy" celibacy is a "precious gift", thus ignoring the biblical teaching that explicitly permits and even encourages marriage for all office holders in the Church?...The rule of celibacy is not a truth of faith, but a church law going back to the 11th Century... 4th Question: Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person? In his eight years as a professor of theology in Regensburg, in close contact with his brother...

The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it. On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican did not discipline a Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing up to 200 deaf boys in the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s as Church laws do not require automatic punishment, its spokesman said on Thursday. The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Vatican did not defrock Rev. Lawrence Murphy in the late 1990s despite receiving clear warnings from his bishops that his case was serious and could embarrass the Church. The report came amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Europe and pressure on bishops, mostly in...

Questions are being raised about whether Pope Benedict was personally involved in covering up a case of child sex abuse by a Roman Catholic priest. Documents seen by the New York Times newspaper allege that in the 1990s, long before he became Pope, he failed to respond to letters about a US case. Fr Lawrence Murphy, of Wisconsin, was accused of abusing up to 200 deaf boys. Defending itself, the Vatican said US civil authorities had investigated and dropped the case. For more than 20 years before he was made Pope, Joseph Ratzinger led the Congregation for the Doctrine of...

ROME, MARCH 22, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The attempt of the press to implicate Benedict XVI in the question of pedophilia is only the most recent sign of the aversion that many have for the Pope. It is necessary to ask oneself how this Pontiff, despite his evangelical meekness and honesty, the clarity of his words joined to the depth of his thought and of his teachings, arouses in some places sentiments of disgust and forms of anti-clericalism that it was believed had been surmounted. And this, it must be said, causes even greater astonishment and also distress when those who do...

A malicious storm is being stirred up over the Pope's alleged failure to deal with abusive priests, says Damian Thompson.After a week of disastrous publicity for the Roman Catholic Church, it's a fair bet that if you conducted a word-association test in the average British high street, the results would be as follows: Catholic priest? "Paedophile." Pope? "Nazi." The reputation of the Church internationally has never been lower. On Wednesday, St Patrick's Day, Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland, apologised for helping to persuade two boys – aged 10 and 14 – to sign letters agreeing not to tell...

Under an all-but-full moon on the opening evening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, tens of thousands of Romans poured into St Peter's Square in a torchlight procession. Called to the window of his study by the multitude, John XXIII, the man Italians called "the good pope" (a term that speaks volumes about their view of the previous 260), delivered one of the great speeches of an eloquent decade. Its emotional high point came when he told the crowd: "Returning home, you'll find the children. Give your children a caress and say: 'This is the caress of the pope.'"Forty-three...

MARCH 22, 2010 The End of Euphemism Benedict XVI and The Corruptions of Catholic Ireland. GEORGE WEIGEL In a March 20 pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI vigorously condemned the physical and sexual abuse of “children and vulnerable young people” in which Irish priests and religious women had engaged for decades, and mandated an Apostolic Visitation of various segments of the Irish Church. The visitation seems likely to result in major changes in the Church’s leadership in what was once one of the world’s most intensely Catholic countries, and is now one of the centers of...

Currently there’s a great hue and cry emanating from the world press in relation to Pope Benedict xvi’s reaction—or rather perceived lack of reaction—to the publicity being given to pedophilia charges brought against certain priests in Europe. The loudest clamor surrounds cases in Germany, particularly in Benedict’s old diocese of Freiburg, Bavaria. Nothing justifies anything but absolute condemnation of the abuse of priestly office. But what is really behind this latest outcry against the Catholic Church and its spiritual leader? Dig behind the headlines and you see an agenda. It’s an agenda driven by fear of the rising power of...

It has become fashionable to claim that the sex abuse scandal currently afflicting the Catholic Church is “its biggest crisis since the Reformation”. Oh, really? Tell me about it. The abuse issue is just a small part of the much larger crisis that has engulfed the Church since the Second Vatican Catastrophe and which is more serious than the Reformation. Abolish clerical celibacy? The last thing a priest abusing altar boys needs or wants is a wife. There is no compulsory celibacy in the Church of England, but that has not prevented vicars and boy scouts furnishing gratifying amounts of...

NOT long after a portly, jovial priest in the German industrial city of Essen was accused of sexually abusing three boys in 1979, he was offered a new home in Munich by Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, who was Archbishop of Munich and Freising at the time, wanted Father Peter Hullermann — known to friends in the church as “Hulli” — to undergo psychotherapy. A psychiatrist quickly concluded that Hullermann was untreatable, however. “I told the church officials that Hullermann must never be allowed to work with children again,” said Werner Huth, the psychiatrist, in an interview...

Here below in full, the text of Pope Benedict's Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland. * * * 1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have...

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI is urging Catholics to be intransigent toward sin but not to judge the sinner. The pontiff addressed pilgrims in St. Peter's Square on Sunday but didn't mention his rebuke to Irish bishops a day earlier for their handling of decades of clergy sexual abuse of minors. He told English-speaking pilgrims they should humbly beg forgiveness for their own failings. Benedict read the Gospel passage about Jesus' inviting those without sin to cast the first stone toward an adulterer. In his letter made public Saturday by the Vatican, Benedict said Irish bishops made grave errors...

Irish victims of clerical child sexual abuse are deeply disappointed by Pope Benedict's letter of apology as it fails to address the role of senior church leaders, a group representing victims said. "My first response was deep disappointment in the letter," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of victims group One in Four. "We feel the letter falls far short of addressing the concerns of the victims." She said the Pope's letter focused too narrowly on lower-rank Irish priests without recognising the responsibility of the Vatican and senior Irish clerics for protecting offenders and dealing with victims. "There is nothing in...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attack on the pope by the New York Times: Once upon a time there was a homosexual priest who was accused of molesting boys in Germany. That was 30 years ago. At the approval of Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger (now the pope), he was sent away for therapy and was later reinstated; years later, under a new archbishop, there was another incident and more therapy. We know this because the New York Times (which does not like to report on molesting rabbis in 2010), told us about this on Saturday in a...

Hitler Rails Against Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI confirmed plans for his visit to Great Britain in September-- and offered some unusually blunt reflections on the situation facing the Church there-- in a February 1 address to a group of visiting British bishops. The Pope told the bishops, who were in Rome for their ad limina visit, that he looked forward to his trip to their country. Although he did not mention specific dates, informed Catholic sources in London have confirmed that the trip will take place in September. The Pontiff went on to say that the Church leadership in England and Wales "needs to...

ROME (CNS) -- Dissident theologian Father Hans Kung criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his recent opening to discontented Anglicans, charging the pope was "fishing" for the most conservative Christians to the detriment of the larger church. Father Kung said the invitation to traditionalist Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church went against years of ecumenical work on the part of both churches, calling it instead "a nonecumenical piracy of priests." The pope's basic message is: "Traditionalists of all churches, unite under the dome of St. Peter's!" Father Kung wrote in an editorial Oct. 28 in the Rome daily La Repubblica....

A note from a reader in the Czech Republic: I come from the Czech republic and I am quite frustrated that the pope`s visit gets such a negative response in the English blogs – or no response at all… In reality, it was fantastic! There was a lot of symbolism which foreigners do not understand. For example: The first place he went (at his own request), the church of Our Lady of Victory, it is THE church – the symbol of recatholisation of the country. In the year 1620 catholics defeated protestants and this particular church in Praha got...

As observers continue to decipher the meaning of Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, all appear to agree that the passage of note, the passage that may prove historic in its implications, is the one that is already becoming known as the “world political authority” paragraph: In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth....

Does Pope Benedict view the alleged Marian apparitions of Medjugorje differently than Pope John Paul II did? Yes, according to a recent interview featuring E. Michael Jones, a well-known American critic of the alleged apparitions. The interview has appeared in several Serbian journals. In the interview, Jones asserts that when he met with Bishop Pavao Zanic, then-ordinary of the Diocese of Mostar (in which Medjugorje is situated) in 1988, the bishop said Cardinal Ratzinger agreed with him and did not believe the alleged apparitions were authentic. But Pope John Paul II did not respond to Bishop Zanic in the...

"Whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord... For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Body of the Lord" - 1 Corinthians 11:27,28 Pope Benedict to Catholics: Kneel and Receive on the Tongue Only Pope Benedict XVI does not want the faithful receiving Communion in their hand nor does he want them standing to receive Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. According to Vatican liturgist, Monsignor Guido Marini, the pope is trying to set...