Poland [kreuz.net] The National Advisory Board is ready to destroy the Catholic broadcaster 'Radio Maryja'. That was according to Polish politician and former Prime Minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, on Friday in an interview with 'Radio Maryja', the government is in "panic for fear of the truth", which the radio station transmits. The Supervisory Board maintains that 'Radio Maryja" uses advertising. That is, however, forbidden because of the non-profit status of the broadcaster.
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Our guest, Alan Dershowitz is one of the foremost lawyers and jurists in the United States.
He's defended some of the most high-profile clients in recent history, including Claus von Bulow, Mike Tyson and O.J. Simpson.
He's a distinguished defender of civil liberties, a widely-read commentator on the Arab-Israel conflict and a vocal supporter of Israel.
He's been widely published in magazines and newspapers. He's the author of 27 works of fiction and non-fiction.
DE PERE — U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson has tried to comply with an advocacy group's request by urging the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay to be open in its investigation of alleged pedophile priests, but members of the group say that isn't enough.
The Republican asked the diocese on Wednesday to be transparent regarding decades-old allegations of child abuse among priests and particularly the Rev. John Patrick Feeney, who was sentenced to prison in 2004 for molesting two brothers in Freedom.
Johnson used to serve on the diocese's financial council and in January testified in Madison against the Child Victims Act — a Wisconsin bill aimed at making it easier for childhood sex abuse victims to sue their attackers — on behalf of the diocese, among other groups. Johnson's statements focused on the financial impact of the bill on nonprofits that serve minors.
For the first time in its history, the Archdiocese of Athens made public its budget, publishing on its website items of income and expenditure for the current year. According to the data released, income from rental property was 529,836 euros (21.97 million Roubles 721,651 USD 457,166 UK Pounds), whilst church activities earned another 400,000 euros (16.586 million Roubles 544,811 USD 345,138 UK Pounds), according to Greek.ru. The total amount of net income for the Archdiocese was 3,457,251 euros (143.354 million Roubles 4.709 million USD 2.984 million UK Pounds), and expenses were 3,454,220 euros (143.228 million Roubles 4.705 million USD 2.981 million UK Pounds). To date, 3,030 euros (125,608 Roubles 4,127 USD 2,615 UK Pounds) remain unspent.
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But faith is a stance in history; it doesn’t preserve us from messiness, or from change, including to religious institutions
(RNS) For generations, thousands of Catholics—from archbishops to people in the pews—saw the Catholic Church as eternal, timeless, and unmoved by the tides of history.
But the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s unleashed a sea of changes—none more significant than the recognition that Catholicism has, and continues to be, shaped by historical events, argues the Rev. Mark Massa in a new book.
Massa’s intellectual history, “The American Catholic Revolution: How the `60s Changed the Church Forever,” describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities—and controversies—in the church.
Odessa, September 27, Interfax - The Odessa Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church believes there is no grounds for building a Greek Catholic cathedral in the city and such plans have aggressive political backgrounds.
"It's quite evident that there's no ground for building a Greek Catholic church in Odessa. Odessa is an Orthodox city," the diocesan secretary Archpriest Andrey Novikov told Interfax-Religion on Monday.
According to the priest, initiators of the building have their own aim - proselytism, converting Orthodox believers in Unia.
"There is no visible presence of Greek Catholics in Odessa. Whom uniate preachers are going to attract to their parish? Certainly Orthodox Odessites - they will try to catch them in networks of Unia through various intricacies," the interviewee of the agency said.
[Minneapolis, Star Tribune] Lucinda Naylor, a Minneapolis artist and part-time church employee, was suspended from her job over a protest sculpture using antigay marriage DVDs distributed by the Catholic church.
The Catholic church began to mail the DVDs to 400,000 Catholics in Minnesota last week. They argue for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the state.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Rev. John Bauer, pastor of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, made the decision to suspend Naylor, a 15-year employee.
[KMSP] Archbishop John Nienstedt announced Monday that every Catholic in the state will be mailed a DVD defending marriage as between one man and one woman, as he hopes to "rally the troops" around the Church's position on the divisive issue just six weeks before Election Day.
Nienstedt appears at the beginning of the eight-minute video, which was prepared by the Knights of Columbus, and will be mailed to the state's Catholics on Wednesday, paid for by a large donation, the archbishop told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Monday evening. The archdiocesan website lists the state's Catholic population at "approximately 800,000."
"Our target is basically our Catholic people," Archbishop Nienstedt said in an interview. "To remind them of what we believe and why we believe it and why it's so important that they believe it."
In Rome there is no acknowledgment of an audience with tennis pro Boris Becker.
[kath.net] In Rome there is no acknowledgment for an audience with Pope Benedict for Boris Becker, according to 'Radio Vatican'. In the German media a few days ago corresponding reports were made. Becker had proposed that he wanted to discuss "Abuse and Contraception" with the Pope. The Praefecture of the Papal house explained that Becker's request for a ticket for the first row are meant for a seat in the first row of a general audience. This has become, in any case, somewhat negative. "Radio Vatican" says that visitors in the first row after the audience have an opportunity to exchange a few words with the Head of the Church. "Private Audiences" where one meets the Pope face to face are reserved in any case for important personages of the Church, politics and public life.
24. The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect. -- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.[Papal Documents Online, here]
ROME, SEPT. 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI called Blessed John Henry Newman a figure of a doctor of the Church. The newly beatified Englishman's biographer affirmed that an official declaration in this regard could take place soon.
ZENIT spoke with Father Keith Beaumont, Australian priest of the Oratory of France, who said, "On this subject I received a confidence about which I cannot be explicit; but it seems that, in Newman's case, his canonization and declaration as a doctor could take place in a very short time."
The priest, who wrote the official biography of the cardinal beatified Sunday by Benedict XVI, noted that "all the Popes since Pius XII hoped to see Newman canonized and declared a doctor of the Church."
On the reported blessing of the Quran: The rector of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament speaks
A few days ago, Rorate picked up a story that had been making the rounds of some Catholic and secular (and at least one Muslim) websites: the report that a ceremony had been organized in front of the very doors of the Cathedral of the Diocese of Sacramento, where flowers were offered to the Quran and which reportedly involved no less than the rector of the Cathedral, Fr. Michael Kiernan, thus giving the impression that the alleged ceremony had the sanction of the cathedral authorities.
Rorate, however, has received -- via a reader -- the following letter from Fr. Kiernan himself to clarify the story:
September 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Wednesday issued a sharply worded rebuke of a book co-authored by two Creighton University theologians.
"The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology" was published in 2008 and written by Todd A. Salzman, chairman of the Creighton University Department of Theology, and Michael G. Lawler, the department’s professor emeritus. The book attempts to provide moral justification for contemporary sexual behaviors that consistently have been held to be immoral by the Catholic Church.
The 23-page statement is titled "Inadequacies in the Theological Methodology and Conclusions of The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology." Drafted by the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine, it calls the authors’ conclusions “a radical departure from the Catholic theological tradition,” erroneous, and “harmful to one’s moral and spiritual life.” Moreover, the statement said, “the book proposes ways of living a Christian life that do not accord with the teaching of the Church and Christian tradition.”
