VP Mike Pence Sits Down for EWTN Interview with Raymond Arroyo

October 16, 2020 By Brian Fraga

With less than three weeks before Election Day, Vice President Mike Pence sat down for an interview this week with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo. The roughly 17-minute interview offered a friendly venue for the vice president to make his case to Catholic voters that the Trump Administration has kept its campaign promises, especially on religious liberty and right-to-life issues, and that the Democratic ticket and its stance on religious freedom should give them pause. “Americans of faith should be concerned at... Read more

Media Spotlight: Judge Amy Coney Barrett and Feminism

October 16, 2020 By Brian Fraga

It’s been interesting to read the different takes in Catholic and secular media on Judge Amy Coney Barrett as to how she relates to feminism, or doesn’t. Rebecca Bratten Weiss, who happens to be the editor of the Patheos Catholic Channel, writes in the National Catholic Reporter that Barrett, whose confirmation hearing for the U.S. Supreme Court was held this week in the U.S. Senate Week, is no feminist icon. She has ruled against environmental protections, even though environmental degradation... Read more

Brooklyn Diocese Sues Government Over Coronavirus Restrictions

October 9, 2020 By Brian Fraga

Via Catholic News Service: The Diocese of Brooklyn filed a lawsuit in federal court Oct. 8 against the state of New York, charging that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new orders reducing church capacity violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. “The executive orders this week have left us with no other option than to go to court,” Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio said in a statement. “We vehemently disagree with the capacity limits being placed on us. They... Read more

Court Docs: New Orleans Priest Recorded Himself in Group Sex on Church Altar.

October 9, 2020 By Brian Fraga

I was a crime reporter for several years, and covered some pretty horrific and bizarre crimes. I like to think that hardly anything can shock me. But this story out of New Orleans is horrific: The lights inside Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church in Pearl River were on later than usual on Sept. 30, so a passerby stopped to take a closer look. Peering inside, the onlooker saw the small parish’s pastor half-naked having sex with two women... Read more

How to Vote as a Catholic: It’s Complicated

October 8, 2020 By Brian Fraga

The Our Sunday Visitor weekly newspaper, where I have the privilege of serving as a contributing editor, has published some excellent essays this election season that clearly spell out the discernment process and the moral-ethical principles that serious Catholic voters are called to prayerfully consider before approaching their polling places on Election Day. Some partisans would tell you that Catholics are obligated to vote a certain way or else they are not “real” Catholics, which is rubbish. In actuality, there... Read more

Newsweek Op-Ed Calls on SCOTUS to Defend Religious Freedom of Catholic Adoption Agency

October 7, 2020 By Brian Fraga

John Bursch, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, writes in Newsweek that the U.S. Supreme Court should “brush politics aside and tell the [the City of Philadelphia] to do its job: Help vulnerable kids.” He writes: “Shutting (Catholic Social Services) down does not help a single child in need; to the contrary, it hurts them by depriving children of the best chance they have to find loving homes.” On Nov. 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Fulton... Read more

Cardinal Pell Accuser Shoots Down Bribery Allegations as Cardinal Becciu Faces New Allegations of Financial Wrongdoing

October 6, 2020 By Brian Fraga

The Associated Press is reporting that the Australian man who accused Cardinal George Pell of sexually abusing him when he was an altar boy in the 1990s says he was not bribed for his testimony. The man’s denial is the latest development in the convoluted saga related to ousted Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who is under suspicion for his alleged role in a shady London real estate deal involving Vatican finances. Cardinal Becciu – who was removed from his Vatican... Read more

Georgetown Scholar in The New Yorker: The Catholic Right is Embracing Autocracy

October 6, 2020 By Brian Fraga

Paul Elie, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, is out with a provocative essay this week in The New Yorker encapsulating the consolidation of power among politically-conservative Catholic elites in the United States. A paragraph that captures the essence of Elie’s piece: Their long project attempts to establish a synthesis between the hierarchical order of Catholic truths and what they call the “American experiment in ordered liberty.” In supporting [President Donald] Trump... Read more

Five Years Since His U.S. Visit, Pope Francis Presses On

October 4, 2020 By Brian Fraga

It seems almost hard to imagine in today’s COVID-19 era, but five years ago I stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a huge crowd of people outside the U.S. Capitol, waiting for Pope Francis to arrive. A politically-connected friend had given me a ticket to the event. I just needed to make my own way down to Washington D.C., and convince the daily newspaper I worked for at the time that the first papal address to a joint session of Congress was worth... Read more