Tag: Catholic

Excerpt:

“She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. “

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money.

On 13 September, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed an 84-page complaint and over 20,000 pages of supporting materials with the International Criminal Court, documenting the charge that the Pope and Vatican officials have tolerated and enabled the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world.

A TIME correspondent—and Catholic—examines his church’s criminalization of attempts to ordain women as priests

Suits name the Vatican as a respondent on grounds that it employed clergy suspected of abuse. Papal spokesmen say it is a sovereign entity and immune from the American court system.

A senior Catholic Church official has threatened controversy by saying that it would be safer not to “defrock” priests who had been convicted of sexually abusing children.

The growing scandal about child abuse reaches the top of the Vatican.

An atheist group in the Irish Republic has defied a new blasphemy law by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations on its website. Atheist Ireland says it will fight any action taken against it in court. The quotations include the words of writers such as Mark Twain and Salman Rushdie, but also Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict XVI moved two of his predecessors closer to possible sainthood Saturday, signing decrees on the virtues of the beloved Pope John Paul II and controversial Pope Pius XII, who has been criticized for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust.
The decrees mean that both men can be beatified once the Vatican certifies that a miracle attributed to their intercession has occurred. Beatification is the first major step before possible sainthood.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the use of crucifixes in classrooms in Italy. It said the practice violated the right of parents to educate their children as they saw fit, and ran counter to the child’s right to freedom of religion.

Abuse victims across Northern Ireland are to launch a landmark legal case against several religious orders, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.

Decades after suffering horrific abuse at the hands of nuns and priests in church-run industrial schools and orphanages a growing number of victims are now turning to the courts for retribution and closure. They are also planning legal action against the government bodies that were responsible for child welfare at the time, for failing to protect them.

Congregations around the U.S. are modifying their rituals to help prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus. A little vodka on the Communion chalice helps.

Pope Benedict has warned that a form of colonialism continues to blight Africa

Thousands of people are expected to attend York Minster later as the relics of a 19th Century French nun arrive in the city.

Four years ago the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, a monk who popularised Buddhism in the West, was invited by the Vietnamese government to return home after 39 years in exile.

A new independent panel to investigate cases of alleged abuse where the police have taken no action has been unveiled by the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

A former Los Angeles priest convicted of molesting two boys has been called before a federal grand jury investigating how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony handled priest abuse cases, a source told The Times. Former priest Michael Stephen Baker said he informed Mahony two decades ago that he sexually abused children, but he was allowed to remain in the ministry and victimized others.

Latinos are changing the nature of American religion. The church of La Placita, “the little square”, formally called Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles, was founded under Spanish rule at around the same time as the pueblo bearing the same name, the future Los Angeles.

A church in Belfast, Ireland, which gave sanctuary to more than a hundred Romanians when they fled from racist violence, has been attacked by vandals. The Romanians had sheltered in the church after being driven from their homes in south Belfast by “disturbances” earlier in the month. Now, all but 14 of them have asked to return to Romania, and the government of Northern Ireland is paying to send the back.

Leaders of the UK’s main religions appeal to their followers to support a campaign to register as organ donors. The Church of England, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the head of the U.K. Hindu Council and the Chief Rabbi have all said that organ donation after death is both permitted and encouraged by their respective religions. The Church of England went farther, calling it a “Christian duty.”