The most remarkable thing about last week’s 40th anniversary of the release of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s watershed encyclical upholding the ban on artificial contraception, is how little comment it aroused. That’s because birth control is at once a major issue and a non-issue. It is a major issue for those in the hierarchy,…

The case of the interdicts against Sr. Louis Lears, who attended an illicit ordination of women as priests, continues to heat up with a debate over NCR’s coverage of the story. Chief among the archdiocese’s critcisms is that they did not authorize someone to videotape the ordination. Tim Burke at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has…

Even as many Catholics watch with concern–and perhaps not a little schadenfreude–as the Anglican Communion at Lambeth splits up over homosexuality, back home in Rome and elsewhere the One True Church is still debating the issue of women and holy orders. Back in April I wrote here about the issue of women’s role in the…

According to the latest AP report, Benedict XVI celebrated a private mass with four hand-picked sexual abuse victims on his last day in Australia: “He listened to their stories and offered them consolation,” the Vatican said in a statement. “Assuring them of his spiritual closeness, he promised to continue to pray for them, their families…

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