Home | Contact Us | Subscribe/Renew | Register | Search | Site Map
Commentary and links to news of the wonderful, weird, interesting and cutting edge through the lens of our Catholic faith. Updated daily by Our Sunday Visitor staff. Email us with question or comments or link suggestions: feedback@osv.com.
BBC News
Some women in countries where abortion is restricted are using the Web to buy medication enabling them to abort a pregnancy at home, the BBC has reported. Women in more than 70 countries with restrictions have used one of the main websites, Women on Web. Almost 11 percent of the women who took the drugs went on to need a surgical procedure — either because the drugs had not completed the abortion or because of excessive bleeding. More info here>>
Beliefnet
A week after the dramatic rescue in Colombia, former hostage Ingrid Betancourt has revealed that praying the Rosary helped her get through her six years in captivity, as David Gibson notes on his blog, Pontifications. Betancourt told Pelerin, a French Catholic weekly, that God saved her from bitterness during her captivity. During a visit to her native France, the politician prayed at Sacre Coeur Basilica in Montmartre and Saint-Sulpice. More info here>>
The Chicago Tribune
A Michigan man has filed lawsuits in a Michigan federal court against two Bible publishers, claiming some editions that Zondervan and Thomas Nelson put out call homosexuality sinful, which has led him to suffer discrimination, emotional pain and mental instability. "By designing this product to promote hate and violence toward homosexuality, because such product is promoted as being the ‘authentic word of God,’ it is a design defect," says Bradley LaShawn Fowler’s lawsuit. More info here>>
Catholic Exchange
YouTube has enabled millions of Americans to post their own videos on the Internet for all to see. It is billed as an equal opportunity outlet for would-be film producers. But the Population Research Institute is alleging the site has yanked its pro-life video, which featured an interview that unmasked a devious effort by the abortion movement to conduct ambush interviews with Latin American bishops and pro-lifers. More info here>>
The Washington Post
John Templeton, 95, a billionaire investor whose lifelong fascination with science, the spiritual realm and their mutual connection to the meaning of life prompted him to establish the Templeton Prize to honor what he called progress in religion, died Tuesday in Nassau, Bahamas. He established the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1972 as a way of recognizing exemplary achievement in work related to life's spiritual dimension. Templeton always made sure its monetary award exceeded that of the Nobel Prize, underscoring his contention that advances in the spiritual domain are no less important than those in other areas of human endeavor. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was the first Templeton Prize laureate in 1973. More info here>>
Agence France Presse
Australian demonstrators protested against Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Sydney for World Youth Day by staging an "annoying" fashion show of T-shirts displaying anti-Catholic slogans. NoToPope, a coalition including Christians, atheists and gay groups, was protesting at new regulations giving po ...
MercatorNet
This week, half a million young people are descending on Sydney, Australia, for World Youth Day and its headliner, Pope Benedict XVI. In an interview with MercatorNet, Tracey Rowland, whom Cardinal George Pell predicted will some day become Australia’s leading theologian, explains the pope’s mysterious yet genuine appeal for young adults. One reason, she says, is that the pope, drawing on his years as a professor, tries to meet the faithful at a particular level of understanding and then draws them into a deeper understanding of the topic. More info here>>
The New York Times
The governing body of the Anglican Church in Britain voted on Monday to approve the appointment of women as bishops, a step that appeared to risk a schism in the church in its historic homeland as the Anglican Communion worldwide faces one of the most serious threats to its unity in its history, over the ordination of homosexual clergy members. The move to approve women as bishops in Britain followed the lead taken by Anglican churches elsewhere; in the United States, Australia and Canada, women have been appointed as bishops for some years. Opponents of female bishops argue that Jesus, in choosing men for his 12 disciples, intended that men alone should have the responsibility of ministering to his followers. More info here>>
U.S. News & World Report
About a month after being vaccinated against the cervical ...
Catholic News Agency
In what American organizers claim is the largest international delegation to World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, the United States will send 15,000 young people to Australia for the July 15-20 event. The pilgrims, most of whom are in their late teens and young adult years, are traveling in 1,140 groups of various sizes, with the largest being 520 people. They will be joined by 50 U.S. bishops, including Cardinal Francis George, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Organizers estimate about 100,000 young people from Australia and 125,000 people from abroad will attend the week-long event later this month. More info here>>
The New Republic
Three decades after the institution of China's one-child policy, there are 37 million more men in the country than women, thanks to sex-selective abortion. One of the results of that extreme imbalance, the New Republic reports, is a disturbing trend throughout the world’s most populous country — macho violence. Young men are taking part in war games and getting involved in crime at an increasing rate. More info here>>
BustedHalo
As we prepare to celebrate the nation’s independence on Friday, Busted Halo remembers Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, who believed the American experience and Catholicism were not mutually exclusive. “The discerning mind will not fail to see,” he wrote in his book “The Church and the Age,” “that the American republic and the Catholic Church are working together under the same divine guidance, forming the various races of men and nationalities into a homogenous people, and by their united action ...
The Washington Times
Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of the Diocese of Richmond, Va., was told that Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Richmond planned to help a 16-year-old refugee from Guatemala obtain an abortion in January, but was told he could not prevent the action by the charity’s executive director that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. "I express my profound apology for the loss of life of one of the most vulnerable among us," Bishop DiLorenzo wrote in a statement that appeared Monday in the Catholic Virginian. "And I apologize for the profound embarrassment this has caused the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, and Catholics throughout the United States." More info here>>
Union of Catholic Asian News
A day after Salesian Father Johnson Prakash Moyalan, was murdered in Nepal, an official from the Syro-Malabar Church predicted the missionary’s “brave death” would inspire others to follow in his footsteps. Father Moyalan belonged to the Salesian Calcutta province. In 1996, he began working in Nepal. "He never bothered about his safety. The last time he visited us was to bless my son's marriage this February. He stayed with us for two weeks," his brother, George Moyalan, told UCA News. "All our family members are in utter shock. I pray to God to give us strength to bear this agony. More info here>>
Catho ...
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
While Archbishop John Nienstedt was in Rome to receive his pallium, gem- and precious-metal-laden rings and crosses, along with a small safe, were stolen from his St. Paul residence. "These things are historically and reverentially irreplaceable," Dennis McGrath, spokesman for the archdiocese, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "They're beyond value." More info here>>
A group of dissident Venezuelan Catholic priests, Lutherans and Anglicans have formed Reformist Catholic Church of Venezuela that supports President Hugo Chavez’s socialist ideals. Cardinal Jorge Urosa Sabino, archbishop of Caracas, accused the reformists of attempting to divide the Catholic Church, which has consistently criticized Chavez's push toward socialism while retaining its status as one of the country's most widely trusted institutions. More info here>>
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
After serving on a jury that convicted two men Monday of a Duquesne home invasion, Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik said convictions are necessary to protect society. "It highlighted for me the valuable process that jury service is in this country. It shows that nobody is too busy to be a juror," said the bishop, who wore a white collar and black suit throughout the three-day trial.
Reuters
Pope Benedict XVI called for Christian unity as he launch a year dedicated to St. Paul on Saturday at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. The jubilee year will run until June 29, 2009. (For OSV resources on the Year of St. Paul, click here.) The pontiff was joined by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of worldwide Orthodoxy, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054. More info here>>
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Archbishop Raymond Burke, who up until Friday headed the Archdiocese of St. Louis, has been named to the Vatican’s highest judicial court — Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. He is the second American prelate picked by Pope Benedict XVI to help govern the Church. In 2005, the pope named Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then elevated him to cardinal. More info here>>
In this essay, commentator Jennifer Roback Morse reports on the efforts in Canada and Britain to make fatherhood redundant. In the UK, Parliament revoked a rule requiring fertility clinics to consider a child’s need for a father before inseminating unmarried women. In British Columbia, birth certificates have spaces for the biological mother, but not for the father. Rather, the documents lists “other parent.” Making same-sex parenting equally acc ...
For Iraqi Christians who have stayed in their country during the years of violence and persecution, paying protection money has become a matter of life and death. The death of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho last February is a high-profile example of the desperate measures Iraqi Christians have had to take to stay alive. Archbishop Rahho used collection money to pay a man who threatened to kill him and his congregation. After he stopped paying the money last year, he was kidnapped and his body was found in a shallow grave outside Mosul. Officials say the demands of Iraqi Christians could be hundreds of dollars a month per male member of a household. In many cases, Christian families drained their life savings and went into debt to make the payments. Insurgents also raised money by kidnapping priests. The ransoms, often paid by the congregations, typically ran as high as $150,000, several priests and lay Christians said. More info here>>
Pope Benedict’s new Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, Msgr. Guido Marini, has been quoted in L’Osservatore Romano, as saying that people receiving Communion kneeling and on the tongue will become common practice at the Vatican. Pope Benedict distributed Communion in that manner during his visit to Brindisi, Italy, last week. "In this regard it is necessary not to forget the fact that the distribution of Communion on the hand remains, up to now, from the juridical standpoint, an exception (indult) to the universal law, conceded by the Holy See to those bishops' conferences who requested it,” Msgr. Marini told the newspaper. More info here>>
Bishop David A. Zubik ...
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
U.S. bishops agree with the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life study that found that faith is an important part of Americans' lives and see in it the call to ongoing religious education. According to the survey, which was released Monday, 92 percent of American adults say they believe in God or a “universal spirit.” Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl said of the study: “At every juncture of our past, Americans have called upon God for guidance, protection, and direction. There is a clear identification with religion in America which, for Catholics, reflects the dedicated efforts of priests, catechists and teachers in our history.” More info here>>
The Wall Street Journal
Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide are aggressively expanding their reach, seeking to woo more affluent patients with a network of suburban clinics and huge new health centers that project a decidedly upscale image. The reason? Opening up new avenues of revenue and increasing the organization’s political clout, says a report in the Wall Street Journal. Last spring, the nonprofit — which has 882 clinics nationwide — dropped its crusading mission statement setting out the rights of all individuals, no matter their income, to “reproductive self-determination.” In its place, Planned Parenthood adopted a crisp pledge to "leverage strength through our affiliated structure to be the nation's most trusted provider of sexual and reproductive health care." More info here>>
The St. Paul Pioneer Press
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ decision to to prohibit a Minneapolis gay pride prayer service has many in the homosexual community up in arms, leading activists to call the action a troubling and telling sign from the Twin Cities' new archbi ...
The International Herald Tribune
After taking on Italy's prosecutors and far-left politicians, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s latest crusade is to make it possible for divorced, remarried Catholics like himself to receive Communion. However, if the message Pope Benedict XVI sent to the International Eucharistic Congress in Canada is any indication, that won’t be happening anytime soon. "We must do all in our power to receive (Communion) with a pure heart," the pope told the congress participants. He appeared to refer to the plight of remarried-divorced Catholics when he added: "Those who cannot have Communion due to their situation will nonetheless find strength" in their desire for it and by going to Mass. More info here>>
In the long-running culture war between evolution and creationism, Philadelphia is firing the latest shot. Nine academic, scientif