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This past week has seen the outrage generated by parents of donor and invitro-fertilization children following a now-infamous Panorama magazine interview conducted with the fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana, wherein Domenico Dolce proclaimed, “You are born to a mother and a father — or at least that’s how it should be. I call children of chemistry, synthetic children.” Immediately, Elton John advocated a boycott of the designers’ products in retaliation for the perceived offense against his two sons, who were conceived via an egg donor and surrogate mother. Speaking as two donor-conceived young women—alive because of reproductive technologies—we felt an...

Juan Carlos Cruz recalls that he and another teen boy would lie down on the priest's bed, one resting his head at the man's shoulder, another sitting near his feet. The priest would kiss the boys and grope them, he said, all while the Rev. Juan Barros watched.

I never write about these stories because they make me physically ill, so I leave it to others. But it seems like this story is dying on the vine, and I’m not sure it should. And it’s Lent, when we’re supposed to do difficult things, so here goes. Pope Francis has appointed Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid to a Bishopric in Southern Chile, and Barros is set to be installed there tomorrow, March 21. This may be a problematic appointment, one that blows up in the Holy Father’s face, because it conflicts with his own “zero tolerance” policies in...

Video evidence released Friday indicates that New York City's Cardinal Timothy Dolan may have ordered the removal of reporters who dared to criticize him during a press rally at the city's famous St. Patrick's Day parade held last Tuesday. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York became persona non grata among faithful Catholics last September when he supported the St. Patrick's Day parade committee's decision to allow openly gay group OUT@NBCUNIVERSAL to march in the parade under their own banner while rejecting pro-life Catholic groups who wished to do the same. Cardinal Dolan called the decision "a wise one" with which...

WASHINGTON — St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco is getting bad press this week over a sprinkler system it installed to keep homeless people from sleeping on church grounds. People are outraged that a church would treat the poor so callously. But St. Mary’s isn’t alone. Many houses of worship all over the country face the question of how to keep safe, welcoming grounds while being compassionate to homeless neighbors sleeping on porches and in doorways. Here’s what we tried at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in Washington, DC. A couple of months ago, we started a dialogue about...

If Catholic leaders do still believe in sin, many sure don’t act like it. A secular dictionary defines sin as “an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains the following definition in paragraph 1850: Sin is an offense against God. . . . Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become “like gods,” knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus “love of oneself even to...

Former SSPX Bp. Williamson consecrated another bishop. They both have incurred the late sententiae excommunication foreseen in Canon Law.The SSPX issued an official statement HERE: On March 19, 2015, Bishop Richard Williamson performed the episcopal consecration of Fr. Jean-Michel Faure at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross in Nova Friburgo, Brazil.Bishop Williamson and Fr. Faure have not been members of the Society of St. Pius X since 2012 and 2014, respectively, [NB] because of their violent criticisms of any relations with the Roman authorities. According to them, such contacts were incompatible with the apostolic work of Archbishop Lefebvre. [I suspect...

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is the Radio Shack of church denominations. It’s been in free fall for so long that it’s sometimes difficult to believe the church is still around. It makes news only when it makes bad news. This is a church that has long embraced a culture of death by accepting abortion on demand. Indeed, church materials have declared that abortion can even be “an act of faithfulness before God,” and church policy states: “The considered decision of a woman to terminate a pregnancy can be a morally acceptable, though certainly not the only or required, decision.”...

SOMMERVILLE, NJ, March 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic high school in New Jersey has suspended a 30-year veteran theology teacher for making comments on her personal Facebook page supporting the Catholic Church's position on homosexual "marriage" and family. Controversy struck when Patricia Jannuzzi, a theology teacher at Immaculata High School in Sommerville, New Jersey, said that she opposed the legal arguments homosexual activists used to persuade the Supreme Court to redefine marriage. “One minute they argue hey [sic] are born this way and it is not a choice to get 14th amendment rights equal protection” – which was intended...

Tributes are pouring in for Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C, who led Notre Dame University as its president for 35 years before retiring in 1986.President Barack Obama, who received an honorary degree from Notre Dame despite his adamant stand in favor of abortion, praised Father Hesburgh in a statement at his death, part of which reads: His belief that what unites us is greater than what divides us made him a champion of academic freedom and open debate. There is much to admire in Father Hesburgh’s legacy, which includes 150 honorary degrees and 16 presidential appointments. He stood with Martin Luther King...

The "interviews" by atheist and Freemason Eugenio Scalfari with Pope Francis have become as famous as infamous. On the 15th of March it was time again. Eugenio Scalfari has published in his house journal La Repubblica, an editorial about Pope Francis. He's cited actual or alleged statements which Pope Francis is said to have expressed in one of the conversations between the Catholic Church and head of the left, anti-clerical opinion makers. Scalfari would not be Scalfari, if he did not present himself in his editorial as the main interpreter of the Argentine Pope's thoughts and actions. This is only...

You will not read this address on news.va, the official Holy See news service, controlled by the Holy See Press Office. I have written in the past that the Holy See Press Office is corrupt, and pushing a heterodox agenda. They were busy at it during the October Synod of the Family, pushing the Adulterist and Homosexualist Party positions. They were busy away distorting the Pope's words last October 3rd, when he addressed the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe. At that time, The Holy See Press Office released this document. But the actual words of the Pope were...

Toward the very end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he enters Jerusalem—knowingly headed to the Lamb’s slaughter. With less than a week of his mortal life remaining, would-be kings or rulers would not have spent their time with the least influential in society.For example, what does a presidential candidate do in his final days before an election? He seeks to rally the troops. He presents his case and seeks to explain why he would be a better leader than the other candidate. He barnstorms and campaigns. He sprints to associate himself with the most powerful persons, teams, and symbols he...

The battle for San Francisco’s Catholic schools has been joined. Will Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone or a public-relations expert survive? Last month, the  archbishop called for changes to the staff and faculty handbooks of the archdiocese’s four high schools in the 2015-2016 school year—Sacred Heart and Archbishop Riordan in San Francisco, Marin Catholic in Kentfield, and Junipero Serra in San Mateo. The proposal would add a detailed statement on Church teaching about sexual morality and the sanctity of life. According to Catholic SF Weekly, the archbishop explained his proposals this way:   "At the outset, I wish to state clearly...

Global Catastrophe Rising: So now what do we do?by Hillary White Wednesday, March 18, 2015 I don’t have any answers for the questions I will pose below, but I think, with less than eight months to go before the next installment of the Synod to End the Family, now might be a good time to at least open the discussion: what do we do when the Cardinal Kasper’s New Paradigm is officially in place? Simply put, can a Catholic in good conscience continue to attend a parish where the priest has agreed to go along with the New Paradigm? And...

Children remind us that “we are always children”, they bring their way of seeing reality, with a “confident and pure” gaze (“they have not yet learned the science of duplicity which we adults have learned”), they can “teach us to smile and cry again”. “Of course they also bring concerns and sometimes many problems, but a society with these concerns and these problems is far better than a society that is sad and gray because it has no children!” This was the crux of Francis’ message at this Wednesday’s General Audience in St. Peter’s Square.  After reflecting on the different figures...

Arthur Fitzmaurice criticized the Church’s 'poor and dangerous theology' on homosexuality. LOS ANGELES, March 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A speaker at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles annual conference for religious educators on the weekend denounced the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, saying the Catechism’s language on the issue is “abusive” and “gravely evil.”Speaking at the conference of 800 catechists from the U.S. and Canada, Arthur Fitzmaurice, the resource director for the Oakland-based Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry a former co-chair of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles' Catholic Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Persons, criticized what he called the...

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) An LDS apostle reaffirmed recently that Mormons who support gay marriage are not in danger of losing their temple privileges or church memberships — even though the Utah-based faith opposes the practice.

Concerns about Cremation: Some Very Strange Practices Are Emerging By: Msgr. Charles PopeSome years ago, the Church gave wider permission for cremation and also lifted traditional restrictions on having cremated remains present in the church for funeral Masses. All of this is pastorally understandable. Very few if any people these days choose cremation for the reasons it had traditionally been forbidden, namely as a denial of the resurrection of the body. Generally the reasons chosen are economic, due to the increasingly high cost of traditional burial and the difficulty, especially in urban areas, of finding room for large cemeteries. The basic norms from the church...

Catholic Relief Services is back in the news, this time for charges related to a sex ed program it implemented for the federal government in Kenya. Since such headlines are no longer surprising, some background may be helpful before considering this most recent case.In trying to understand the ongoing controversy regarding “the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States,” there are two primary ways one might err. The first would be to deny that Catholic Relief Services does an incredible amount of good in bringing aid to the poor around the world. The second...