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Dear Father Weinandy,You may remember me as your predecessor as executive director of the Secretariat for Christian Doctrine at the U.S.C.C.B. You replaced me in January 2005.I am writing this open letter to you in response to your open letter to Pope Francis in which you address what you describe as a “chronic confusion” that seems to mark his pontificate.According to Sandro Magister’s introduction to your letter, you had asked Jesus for a sign as to whether you should write your letter, you received that sign and thus “no longer had any doubt that Jesus wanted me to write….” I...

Pope committing “calumny” against some of his critics @import url("chrome://global/skin/aboutReaderContent.css"); It has been revealed today that Father Thomas Weinandy, former chief of staff for the U.S. Bishops' committee on doctrine and currently a member of the Vatican's International Theological Commission, sent a letter to the Holy Father on July 31 criticising him for “demeaning” the importance of doctrine, committing “calumny” against some of his critics, and appointing bishops who “scandalise” believers with dubious “teaching and pastoral practice.” He stressed the Holy Spirit is given to the Church, and particularly to the Pope, to “dispel error, not to foster it,” and...

Hot off the presses and hitting a church near you comes the pamphlet, “Our Faith Teaches: Welcoming the Refugee and the Migrant.”  The pamphlet begins the church’s two-year mass education effort to condition (especially United States) Catholics to support programs like “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) and apparently accept “global migration” by any immigrant group -- no questions asked. The “Share the Journey” website first introduces us to immigrant “Ruth” -- a name obviously meant to invoke the Biblical Ruth who was widowed and then followed her mother-in-law into a strange land -- and famously gave the world, “Whither...

Follow Up and Update (to E. Yore's The Money Trail: Why Catholic Bishops are Silent on Hillary):To the chagrin of the USCCB, their favored candidate didn’t win the election. Despite their scandalous neutrality in the presidential campaign, Donald Trump, carrying the pro life banner,  toppled the Catholic establishment’s choice, the abortion loving, Hillary Clinton.   The article below details the stagering governmental beneficence bestowed on the Catholic Bishops for refugee and immigration programs by the Obama Democratic Administration.  The hundreds of millions in government grants support the Church’s social justice ministry bureaucracy. Is it any wonder that the Bishops promote massive Muslim...

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) wasn't interested in commenting on whether Amoris Laetitia means same-sex couples must be given Holy Communion if their "conscience" tells them it's OK. As LifeSiteNews asked the question at a Thursday press conference, the bishop of Burlington, Vermont, whispered something to the USCCB's director of public affairs, who then said questions should only relate to topics the bishops discussed that morning. "OK, I – you know, the press conference, the panel has been put together pertaining to topics from today's news agenda, so I think we really need to stick to topics that ... were...

On May 19, five of the USCCB’s leading bishops sent a letter to every senator and representative, denouncing President Trump’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018 as “profoundly troubling.” Invoking “moral criteria” and the “common good,” the bishops insist that Congress abandon Trump’s cuts in federal welfare programs. In a bow to fiscal responsibility, they endorse cuts in defense spending instead. Essentially, the bishops are calling on Congress to preserve the spending priorities that prevailed during the Obama administration. Apparently that includes Obama’s support for full funding of Planned Parenthood, which the letter does not mention. And curiously, while the...

Timothy D. Lusch is an attorney and writer. His work has appeared in Saint Austin Review, New English Review, and Chronicles, and at CatholicExchange.com and Crisis.com. He blogs at www.pityitspithy.com. Ed. Note: This is the first in a three-part series on the Catholic Church and Islam.

SANTA CRUZ, Guatemala — Bishops in the United States and Mexico have released new statements on the immigration issue that reflect their growing opposition to President Trump’s immigration policies. On March 22, the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a “pastoral reflection,” entitled “Living As A People Of God In Unsettled Times.” The document is significantly less hostile to opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens than similar statements issued prior to Trump’s election victory, indicating a change not of policy but of tactics on the part of the bishops’ conference. Before the election, bishops routinely...

Is a conflict of interest behind some of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ strong criticisms of President Trump’s immigration policy, in particular his two temporary travel bans? That’s the question being raised by a number of experts in foreign policy and Catholic charitable work, including a former adviser to President Bush and a leading figure in conservative Catholic media. These critics are pointing out that in Fiscal Year 2016, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) received more than $91 million in government funding for refugee resettlement. Over the past nine years, the USCCB has received a total of $534,788,660...

The USCCB doesn't know who wrote the Gospel of Matthew? Let’s tell them. Featured Written by  Steven O'Reilly Rate this item 12345 (9 votes) Many faithful lay Catholics, I suspect, look at the conclusions that Catholic scripture scholars and theologians have come to in their studies over the last 50 plus years and have come to a conclusion of their own: theology is too important to be left to the theologians. That is not to say there are not good scholars and theologians who are perfectly fine. While that is no doubt true, it is also true in past decades...

Following is the text from a revealing March 2nd podcast by Chris Manion of the Population Research Institute. March 13, 2017 (Population Research Institute) – Shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as Secretary of State, senior officials of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Relief Services wrote him an impassioned plea. It was their way of introducing themselves to the foreign policy community of the new administration, so the Secretary undoubtedly considered their letter to be a statement describing the highest foreign-policy priorities of Catholics in America. Is that what it was? Well, we report – you...

Imagine if your teenage son’s pastor had told him to apply “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off,” by applying a buzzsaw to his own right wrist. You’d yank your son out of that group and start making some phone calls. That same sense of alarm and horror is what we should feel when we learn that influential Christians have interpreted our faith in some deeply misguided way which will do grave harm to them and others. A Cabal of Catholic Leftists Cardinal Peter Turkson and twenty-four American Catholic bishops have recently endorsed a political program...

Both the Catholic bishops of the United States and the Vatican have now virtually endorsed the strategy of “disruption” being used across the nation to oppose the new administration of President Trump. Held in Modesto, California, the U.S. Regional World Meeting of Popular Movements (WMPM), was sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Vatican’s Department of Integral Human Development to address issues of “land, labor, and lodging,” as well as racism and immigration.The 700 attendees applauded and cheered as Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego told them, “President Trump was the candidate of disruption. . . ....

The New York Times and the U.S. bishops appear to have very different understandings of President Trump's motivations, but do seem to arrive at an equally negative conclusion. First, here is Times' editor David Leonhardt's take, titled "Trump Flirts With Theocracy": Let’s not mince words. President Trump’s recent actions are an attempt to move the United States away from being the religiously free country that the founders created — and toward becoming an aggressively Christian country hostile to other religions. ... On Friday afternoon, of course, Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and citizens of seven majority Muslim countries...

I don't want to quote the Slimes, in part because of excerpt rules but also because it's just fake news. Click the link if you must but wash up afterwards. In the linked article, every single "Christian Leader" is nothing more than a paid "refugee" resettlement contractor. They make lots of money by bringing in immigrants. The government funded United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who received almost eighty million tax dollars in 2014. Church World Service, who according to Charity watch receives over 50% of their funding from the government. Finally, they cite World Relief which is also listed...

The dialogue stems from concerns expressed by U.S. bishops in the wake of “a serious uptick in violence against American Muslims … to make sure that they are sensitive to what is going on in the (Muslim) communities,” said Anthony Cirelli, associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A Kentucky bishop is one of several clerics and religious scheduled to participate in a pro-LGBT symposium sponsored by New Ways Ministry, a dissident Catholic group censured by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Bishop John Stowe of the diocese of Lexington is scheduled to participate in the group's eighth annual symposium, called "Justice and Mercy Shall Kiss: LGBT Catholics in the Age of Pope Francis," being held April 28–30, 2017 in Chicago. New Ways Ministry is notorious for demanding changes in Church teaching on the morality of same-sex relations, the normalization of so-called transgenderism and ordination of women...

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston was elected president of the U.S. bishops' conference Nov. 15 for a three-year term to begin at the conclusion of the bishops' annual fall general assembly in Baltimore.Cardinal DiNardo collected a majority of votes on the first ballot of voting during the second day of the bishops' public session. Based on the number of bishops voting, 104 votes were needed for election, and Cardinal DiNardo -- the current vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops -- received 113.He will succeed Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, whose...

WASHINGTON — Bishops in the United States called on Catholics to pray for elected officials on the morning following the 2016 presidential election, exhorting them to work for unity and to promote the common good. [snip} According to New York Times exit polls, Catholics overall voted 52% for Trump and 45% for Clinton. NBC News exit polls showed the results fell sharply along racial lines: Trump won white Catholics by 23 percentage points, 60 to 37, while Clinton won Hispanic Catholics 67% to 26%. [snip} In his statement, Archbishop Kurtz reaffirmed the bishops’ commitment to upholding the sanctity of all...

URGENT: Pledge to boycott Catholic Relief Services until they commit to Church teaching. Sign here! BALTIMORE, Maryland , October 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholic Relief Services facilitated the distribution of more than two million units of various types of contraception, including abortifacients, in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the course of four years, the Lepanto Institute says in a new report. The program resulted in skyrocketing birth control use in the region where previously residents had minimal knowledge of contraception, says Lepanto. The US Bishops’ international relief agency was an implementing partner from 2006 to 2010 in the US-funded...