The cause for Sister Maura Clarke is getting more attention. This, from Spectrum News in New York City: In the Rockaways, the people that live in Belle Harbor have not forgotten Sister Maura Clarke. “Maura Clarke was from this parish…every year we’ve had a mass in honor of her,” said Father William Sweeney, the Pastor at St. Frances de Sales Catholic Church. Clarke’s face is memorialized on a stained glass window at the church. Sweeney said it is a tribute... Read more
Great stuff, via Tony Rossi at The Christophers, who profiles actor Gary Sinise (who has just written a memoir, “Grateful American”) and describes how he found his way into the Catholic Church: He was facing his own battles on the homefront. His wife, Moira, was struggling with alcoholism and was unwilling to admit her problem. Faced with the loss of her family, she finally pursued the help she needed and moved toward recovery. While attending an AA meeting at St.... Read more
Here’s news you don’t hear about every day, via AFP: Egyptian authorities have arrested four students for mocking Christian rituals in an online video and ordered them to be kept in custody for four days, a judicial source said Monday. The university students aged between 19 and 24 were accused of being in “contempt of the Christian religion”, the source said. If tried and found guilty they could face up to five years in prison. They were arrested last week... Read more
From The Washington Post: “20 years, 700 victims” So reads part of the headline of a sweeping investigation that has found years of sexual abuse perpetrated by hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders against an even larger number of victims. The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reported that nearly 400 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced sexual misconduct allegations in the past two decades. As many as 700 victims — some as young as 3 — were sexually abused, some raped... Read more
From CBS News: Chicago police are investigating an officer’s death last Saturday as a possible suicide. If so, that would make six police suicides there since the summer. Blue HELP, which provides mental health resources for police, said officers are twice as likely to die by their own hands than in a confrontation with a criminal. Every week, Chicago Police Chaplain Rev. Dan Brandt rides deep into the city’s most violent neighborhoods, listening to the cops who patrol these streets. What... Read more
Worth re-reading: Nostra Aetate, “In Our Time,” the Catholic Church’s “declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions.” It was promulgated in 1965 during the Second Vatican Council. In this short document, we find the following: Other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions.... Read more
From Catholic News Agency: A Muslim man convicted of murder has been executed in Alabama without his imam present, despite the man’s requests to have his spiritual advisor with him during his execution. Domineque Ray, 42, was sentenced to death for the 1995 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Ray specifically requested that the Christian prison chaplain be excluded from the execution chamber, and asked that his imam be present to “provide spiritual guidance for him at the time... Read more
What would you do if you learned your unborn had a rare brain disease and would die hours after being born? This young couple decided to carry their baby to term — and in doing so, gave her the chance to save others. This story is a stunner: When Krysta Davis was 18 weeks pregnant, she and her partner Dereck Lovett were told that their unborn child had anencephaly, a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without... Read more
Details: Despite a temporary setback at the Supreme Court on Thursday night, the anti-abortion movement nationwide is pursuing its best chance in years to aggressively curb abortion access, and with a bench it believes remains in its favor. For years, anti-abortion activists have advanced a long-term and wide-ranging strategy to control state legislatures and governorships, in order to chip away at abortion rights. The Louisiana law, which was blocked by the court and would have limited access to abortion providers,... Read more
From Reuters: Vatican officials will meet next week to decide the fate of disgraced former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick over allegations of sexual abuse, Vatican sources said on Friday. Vatican sources told Reuters last month that McCarrick will almost certainly be dismissed from the priesthood, which would make him the highest profile Roman Catholic figure to be defrocked in modern times. Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican department that... Read more
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