More details of the connection between Blessed Mary MacKillop s excommunication and the sisters reporting of sexual abuse nbsp This time the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart MacKillop s order weigh in on the story nbsp From CNS The religious congregation co-founded by Blessed Mary

I wanted to take this opportunity to invite any interested readers who find themselves in the Twin Cities area on October 18th to attend my Archbishop Ireland Memorial Lecture The Child in the Family of God This lecture if free and open to the public and will be based upon research found in Let

From the Irish Echo today on an American Jesuit s work for justice The Rev Joseph Mulligan is the kind of person who can see the up side and the down side of a situation It rsquo s a quality that has helped him in the 24 years he rsquo s worked as a pastor in Nicaragua He rsquo s had to deal wit

Over breakfast Tuesday morning I was reading the newspaper and alighted on a story about an anti-Borat film by a director from Kazakhstan who is out to lampoon the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen s infamous Borat and restore a sense of honor to many Kazakhs that was taken away by Cohen s film Halfway

Has David Letterman been hanging out with Bread for the World s David Beckmann Maybe the Daves were switched by mischievous CBS executives Who can say but after apparently going on a lengthy rant about one of the Seven Deadlies that is particularly popular within U S borders while poor Rachel Ra

The Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary is a celebration of prayer and in particular for thanksgiving of the naval victory over the Turks at the battle of Lepanto on October 7 1571 According to catholicculture org ldquo The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was instituted to honor Mary for the Chri

Over at the American Spectator writer Mark Tooley takes to task the Episcopal bishops of the United States for promoting the notion that impenetrable national borders may immorally block access to basic human rights such as employment health care food education and other necessities and that t

Fr Jack Collins a Paulist priest asks passersby what they know about the saints and the answer is almost nothing at all nbsp It s from Bustedhalo com s series You Don t Know Jack nbsp There s one guy at the end who seems to know a little but he looks rather shady James Martin SJ

The priest who was widely quoted here and here and here as nbsp stating that part of the reason nbsp for the 1870 excommunication of the soon-to-be-canonized Blessed Mary MacKillop was her participation in raising nbsp questions about nbsp a sexually abusive priest now says he was misquoted nbsp

The word respect comes from a Latin verb meaning to look at so this October is naturally a time to look at life and as Christians discern ways to cherish and promote life on this Earth From the countless brochures being handed out in Catholic churches across the United States this October--the

In a recent post in First Things Elizabeth Scalia in trying to position the dissent of Cardinal John Henry Newman offers that there ought not to be a gulf in Catholic thinking between faith and reason or in her words ldquo intellectual rigor and loyalty are not mutually exclusive rdquo Ther

There was a time -- and it lasted many years -- when the crisis caused by clerical sex abuse happened outside the Vatican s walls Even when it was no longer seen as just an Anglo-Saxon problem it remained a bishops problem a question for the local Church as it was known in Rome There was plen

That s America s not of course America s Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University has a hard-hitting article under that title at the Guardian that s well worth a read He paints a picture of a United States in a nasty mood no longer interested in compassion and falling into the politics of rac

The decision to award Robert Edwards the developer of in vitro fertilization the Nobel Prize received front page coverage from the New York Times today The story notes the church s objections to the procedure but does little to flesh them out For more on that front see today s story from Cathol

A few notable online items this week First an interview with George Coyne S J of the Vatican Observatory Fr Coyne explains how the Vatican became involved in astronomy and responds to Stephen Hawking s recent statements on the origins of the universe see minute 15 40 Kevin Clarke recently

Given that the Blessed John Henry Newman has only been approved for devotion in England and the optional memorial celebrating him approved for 9 October in the National Calendar for England alone it would obviously be very wrong and wicked for this Englishman to alert American Catholics to the exi

Politicians addressing their own religiosity is nothing new in this country for sure President John F Kennedy had to promise that his public policy would not be unduly influenced by his Roman Catholic faith which was seen as threatening to the American read WASP way of life in the 1960s More r

As part of my family is Jewish I am a Catholic theologian who participates not only in Catholic parish life but who also is a member of a synagogue I have not previously written about this part of my theological life but I thought it might be appropriate here on the America magazine blog to bri

It s impossible not to be moved by the terrible stories of the five youths who recently took their own lives because they were being harassed as gays and lesbians nbsp nbsp In New York the story of Tyler Clementi the Rutgers freshman who was filmed having a romantic encounter with another man wh