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Pontifications

That’s the name of a new blog from Sharon McEachern in Denver. Sharon cross-posted to our “Eugenics” story out of Louisiana, and takes it a few levels deeper–as she does with many other ethical issues of our day. They challenge us to live more ethically is ways large and small. Check out Ethic Soup.

Speaking of English saints (or would-be saints, as in the case of Newman, below)…In today’s NYtimes, reviewer Ben Brantley broaches the unspeakable: Is it heresy to whisper that the sainted Thomas More is a bit of a bore? Even Frank Langella, an actor who can be counted on to put the pepper in mashed-potato parts,…

Was Cardinal Newman gay? Or (as the joke has it) simply divine? That was the controversy that dominated the dust-up over exhuming John Henry Newman, the great nineteenth-century English convert to Rome, in order to move his body to a more suitable location for veneration–that in anticipation of his beatification (the penultimate step to canonization)…

“The first Jew to address a Vatican synod said on Monday that wartime Pope Pius XII should have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust.” That’s the lead on the incisive Reuters story about Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen of Haifa, in Israel, who told Reuters he might have stayed away if he had known the…

In the week since Paul Newman died I’ve been looking for the Catholic “hook” to write something here about the great movie star. Providentially, and not surprisingly, thanks to its punchier new style, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, gave me an opening. The Sept. 29 edition carried an appreciation of the actor, writing:”In his…

Finally. And it’s thanks to lay people who are leading the way. Business Week has an excellent story on the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management (NLRM) and its founder and guiding light, Geoffrey Boisi: Along with issuing guidelines for a financial audit of all 195 dioceses (the territory under the authority of a bishop),…

Who’s afraid of Sarah Palin? And her faith? I’m one of those who thinks all the hand-wringing about her supposedly ideological right-wing faith is way overblown. Could she be a right-wing religious ideologue if in office? Perhaps she’d follow the script if that’s what she was told to do. But what really emerges from a review of her statements…

Nicholas P. Cafardi, a civil and canon lawyer, and a professor and former dean at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, is a pro-life, pro-Obama Catholic. He joins Doug Kmiec as another high-profile conservative Catholic to endorse Obama–and put himself at odds with a number of bishops. Cafardi makes his case in a column…

A strong statement from the head of the U.S. bishops domestic justice committee offers five conditions to guide any rescue/bailout package. In the Sept. 26 statement (it didn’t get much press; I just found it now via ZENIT), Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre (Long Island) stressed “responsibility, accountability, awareness of advantages and limitations of…

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, recently promoted to the Vatican as head of the Apostolic Segnatura (a kind of church Supreme Court, only more complicated) wastes no time making waves on the other side of the pond. In an interview with Avvenire, the daily of the Italian bishops conference, Burke was asked if he…
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