Free Republic

I wanted to ask for your prayers. I am going to have surgery on Wednesday May 8th to remove a tumor that is wrapped around my lower spine. The surgery promises to be very long. I've had chemo which has shrunk the tumor considerably. What I need now is for Jesus to guide the surgeon's hands. Please also say a prayer for my wife and family. Christ bless you all.

The Roman Catholic Church, my church, is being lied about, subjected to the obscene rantings of modern-day common scolds, and made a victim of some of the most overt examples of just plain bigotry I have seen in my long life. During colonial times in New England, certain shrewish women notorious for their constant and unremitting harping about everybody and everything were accused of being "common scolds." Those harpies found guilty of the offense were sometimes tied to a chair attached to long poles and dunked like doughnuts in the nearest body of water until they were choking and...

Payments to victims of sexual abuse by priests in the United States could reach $1bn. The estimate is quoted by the leading Catholic magazine America, which says many people are so angry about the scandal that they want to punish the church. In addition to multi-million dollar law suits, it is thought that some Roman Catholics may now withhold donations to the church. Estimates put the total payments at $350m to $1bn America magazine And many insurance companies, who used to offer the Church cover for claims of sexual abuse, are said to be no longer prepared to take...

Chrétien says not having a priest at Sept. 11 memorial is his 'best decision': 'Rant' to caucus claimed OTTAWA - Jean Chrétien told Liberal MPs and Senators yesterday that the "best decision" he made after Sept. 11 was not to have a priest speak at the memorial service on Parliament Hill for the victims of the terrorist attacks. Insiders say the Prime Minister spoke for almost 10 minutes at the weekly national caucus meeting about the dangers of mixing religion and politics and about the Catholic Church. "It was a rant," one MP said. Dan McTeague, a Liberal MP from...

Cardinal Anthony M. Bevilacqua's sweeping rejection of gay men becoming priests diverges from mainstream thinking by U.S. Catholic theologians and policymakers, a range of church scholars said in interviews this week.But his remarks echoed a little-known Vatican decree issued four decades ago that may come into play as church leaders labor toward a national response to the sex-abuse scandal in the church.Upon his return last week from the cardinals' summit conference in Rome, Cardinal Bevilacqua weighed in on the debate about gays in the priesthood - a hot issue in the scandal - with a categorical pronouncement.No "homosexually oriented" men,...

ATLANTIC CITY - Three years before his death in 2001, a priest said he wanted to end "the silence of the decades" regarding alleged sexual abuse by his colleagues in the Camden Diocese. So Monsignor Salvatore J. Adamo, then 78, went to the office of an attorney who had filed a class-action suit on behalf of victims and gave an affidavit in which he said the diocese promoted homosexual priests and ignored allegations of abuse to avoid moral responsibility and financial liability. He said the late Bishop George Guilfoyle - who he said was known as "the Queen of the...

CARDINALS AND BISHOPS, PLEASE LEAVE THE CHANCERIES AND COME AMONG US TO HEAL Dear Cardinals: We wrote the American bishops a month ago. At that time we suggested (hopefully with adequate humility) that the current crisis in the Church could be resolved in large part by a return to tradition -- by a return to basic Christian holiness.  If you would so allow, we'd like to extend that argument. We write you again with what we hope is obedience. But we write with urgency. There is revolution in the air. Lay groups are forming. Radical nuns are expressing rage. The...

O God of earth and altar O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry, our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die; the walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide, take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride. From all that terror teaches, from lies of tongue and pen, from all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men, from sale and profanation of honor, and the sword, from sleep and from damnation, deliver us, good Lord! Tie in a living tether the prince and priest and thrall, bind...

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER, 2002 A PROCLAMATION BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "Since our Nation's founding, Americans have turned to prayer for inspiration, strength and guidance. In times of trial, we ask God for wisdom, courage, direction and comfort. We offer thanks for the countless blessings God has provided. And we thank God for sanctifying every human life by creating each of us in His image. As we observe this National Day of Prayer, we call upon the Almighty to continue to bless America and her people. Especially since September 11, millions...

Four men who say they were molested by a priest in the largest US Catholic community sued Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony for allegedly covering up sexual abuse by clergymen for years. The lawsuits claim the cardinal and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles effectively conspired to protect priests through racketeering, negligence and fraud. The alleged victims filed two lawsuits with the Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming they were misled about the fate of priest who allegedly molested them in the 1960s while he was allowed to continue ministering. "We would not be here today if I was not lied to...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardinal Roger Mahony, who leads the nation's largest Catholic diocese, was in good condition Monday after being hospitalized for treatment of a blood clot in his lung, church officials said. Mahony, 66, was admitted Sunday night to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, the archdiocese said in a statement. He is expected to remain hospitalized for several days. Mahony returned last week from a two-day Vatican summit where he met with the pope and other U.S. cardinals to discuss the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic church. Since returning, he has maintained...

Ven. Anne Catherine Emmerich An Augustinian nun, stigmatic, and ecstatic, born 8 September, 1774, at Flamsche, near Coesfeld, in the Diocese of Munster, Westphalia, Germany; died at Dulmen, 9 February, 1824. Her parents, both peasants, were very poor and pious. At twelve she was bound out to a farmer, and later was a seamstress for several years. Very delicate all the time, she was sent to study music, but finding the organist's family very poor she gave them the little she had saved to enter a convent, and actually waited on them as a servant for several years. Moreover, she...

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — The priest in charge of the Church of the Nativity left the besieged compound Sunday for the first time in a month so he could celebrate Mass at a nearby church. The Rev. Ibrahim Faltas and another monk from inside the church were escorted by Palestinian and Israeli vehicles to St. Anthony's Church, about 1 1/2 miles from the Church of the Nativity. They returned a few hours later. More than 200 Palestinians, including about 30 gunmen, took cover in the compound April 2 in a hail of gunfire during an Israeli invasion, part of...

St. Catherine of Siena by Mary Ann Sullivan St. Catherine of Siena deliberately told popes, queens and kings how to behave. She was spontaneous, unafraid of authority and fearless in the face of death. She was a Dominican religious who corresponded with Popes and peasants alike. Born in 1347, at Siena, Italy, Saint Catherine lived through the Black Death, famine and numerous civil wars. During her lifetime the papal residence moved from Rome to Avignon and back again, and the great western Schism pitted Pope against anti-pope. Even at a young age, Catherine sensed the troubled society around her and...

 A message from Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., Publisher, Ignatius Press.In the papers, on the talk shows, the mantra is repeated: the cure for the present scandals is a married clergy. Of course, celibacy has nothing to do with these scandals: 1) Look at the Anglican church, which may soon be bankrupt in western Canada because of sex abuse lawsuits. 2) The majority of reported cased are of homosexual relations with young boys, not pedophilia; the perpetrators wouldn't be marrying women even if they had the chance. (And what kind of woman would marry these twisted souls?) And, of course,...

SIEVERNICH. More and more visitors are coming to the village church of St. John the Baptist in Sievernich. Not waves of pilgrims yet, but in Sievernich, a district of Vettweiß in Voreifel near Bonn, the influx of visitors is increasing. The village has 460 residents, about 360 of whom are Roman Catholic. Like other visitors, I cross the churchyard where the gravel between the graves crunches beneath my feet as I search for the entrance. My eyes wander through the church. Just past the door on the left stands a Fatima Madonna. Candles lit by earlier visitors burn in...

from THE SECOND SORROW OF MARY: THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT ... The most holy Virgin one day appeared to Blessed Collette, a Franciscan nun, and showed her the Infant Jesus in a basin, torn to pieces, and then said: ' Thus it is that sinners continually treat my Son, renewing His death and my sorrows. My daughter, pray for them, that they may be converted.' To this we may add another vision, which the venerable sister Joanna of Jesus and Mary, also a Franciscan nun, had. She was one day meditating on the Infant Jesus persecuted by Herod, when she...

An alleged victim says he was abused for years. A Boston priest at the heart of a sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church taught children how to inject drugs, his diary has revealed. Reverend Paul Shanley, who was involved with the North American Man Boy Love Association which promotes sex between men and children, also suffered from sexually transmitted diseases, he wrote. Personal papers and other documents relating to Mr Shanley have been discovered by the Boston archdiocese and handed to lawyers suing the Church on behalf of an alleged victim of molestation. Revelations about...

CATHOLIC ACTION COPPER SUNDAY May 19, 2002 If you are Catholic and you favor (1)ONE STRIKE, YOU'RE OUT, (2)criminal prosecution of all perpetrators of sex crimes (whether cardinals, bishops, priests or deacons),(3)weeding homosexuals out of the seminaries; and, (4)the promotion of orthodox leaders in the Church show your displeasure with the current inactionof the US Catholic Cardinals and US bishops by putting only a single penny in the collection basket on Sunday, May the 19th, 2002. Remember to pray, fast, and make sacrifices for the welfare of the Catholic Church, for the Pope, and for Christ's godly and holy...

PHILADELPHIA - Embattled Boston archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law, under siege from the epic sex scandal threatening his 18-year legacy, will likely be replaced and sent to the Vatican by the beginning of June, according to sources. Law, who arrived in Newark, N.J., yesterday after the historic two-day conclave of American cardinals at the Vatican, will be reassigned by Pope John Paul II to an as-yet determined position prior to a scheduled deposition of Law in a legal suit against the archdiocese, according to church officials. ``There will be a promotion by June at the latest,'' said one source. ``They...