This is easy: there are only 4 dots. Across the US, and also more broadly across much of the rest of the world, Catholics are leaving the Church in droves. In the US, the group of former Catholics now outnumber…
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Conscience & Legislation: Sanity From the Catholic Church in Malta.
In the US and Mexico, some bishops are working themselves into a froth over the possible introduction of legal recognition for same-sex unions. In the Philippines, the issue that has them excited. In Malta, it is the possibility of legal…
Gay Catholics: the Real Issues
As a gay Catholic in Minnesota, as co-ordinator of the Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities, as editor of the Progressive Catholic Voice, and in several other capacities, Michael Bayly is right in the thick of things in the conflicts in…
Celibacy and a Wounded Church: Readers’ Observations
A few weeks ago, I was sent me this anecdote by email: A friend of Armin’s was recently in Austria to bury her mother. Her aunts referred to the priest’s “frau”; Sandra thought that was a bit odd because Catholic…
Blessed John Henry and Ambrose: Newman’s Last Sermon
The media caravanserai has moved on, but Cardinal John Henry Newman is now and will remain known as Blessed John Henry. He remains also a significant, if complex, figure for gay and lesbian Catholics in his relationship with his beloved…
Chicago: More than half of parishes had priest accused of abuse
In Chicago, a careful analysis by activists based on the Church’s own database and on court records has been simply dismissed by the diocese. The report concluded that over half of the diocese’s parishes have at one time or another…
New twist in Belgian Catholic abuse legal row
After the Belgian police controversially raided the bishops’ offices and Cardinal Daneels’ home, confiscating truckloads of material relating to allegations of church sexual abuse, two lower courts ruled that the raid had been inaoppropriate, and ordered that the material would…
John XXI: The Pope Who Promoted Birth Control, Abortion and Aphrodisiacs
I love the oddities that can be discovered in the lesser known corners of Church history. Peter of Spain has gone down in history as Pope John XXI, whose brief papacy (1276 - 77) ended when part of the ceiling of…
Bishops “Protecting Marriage” and the ‘had it’ Catholics
As some Catholic bishops persist in attempts to impose their disordered ideas on sexual ethics and civil marriage on the rest of the population, they would do well to read and ponder deeply a post by Tom Roberts at NCR…
“Coming Out”: A Gospel Command.
When I wrote yesterday about Fr Donal Godfrey’s homily to Most Holy Redeemer parish on “Finding God in the Erotic”, I referred in passing to another of his sermons, in which he compared coming out to Jesus’ command to Lazarus,…
