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Pontifications

Okay, that’s a joke. Actually, it’s the other way around. (You knew that, right?) But friends in the religious community have suggested that turning the tables might not be a bad idea. The reason for the asperity is set out in this recent New York Times story by Laurie Goodstein about the Vatican’s double-barreled review of…

That is the title of Michael Sean Winters’ fascinating essay at NCR on Cardinal Gibbons’ 1887 sermon delivered in Rome at Santa Maria in Trastevere (my old neighborhood church, alas). The ocassion was the consistory elevating Gibbons, of Baltimore, to cardinal, just the second American so honored. This was the era of the Americanist debates…

The current president has cited the late cardinal before, most recently in his speech at Notre Dame: “He was a kind and good and wise man,” Barack Obama said then of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. “A saintly man.” And the “Common Ground” approach of Chicago’s Bernardin and Chicago’s Obama have great resonances. At a meeting this morning with [mainly] Catholic…

Like too many people, I suspect, I never watched “On the Waterfront” straight through until well into adulthood. And probably just as well, because I could appreciate it–and the labor priest and activist Fr. Pete Barry, played by Karl Malden, who passed away July 1 at the age of 97. Part of what made the…

It took place at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles on Tuesday, and seemed to represent everything about Farrah Fawcett, and the Catholic imagination–if you can imagine that combo. I can, or I would like to. For one thing, there was the funeral program–at right–with a cover I’d like to have for…

Benedict XVI’s rather pious letter opening the Year for Priests is beginning to elicit some reactions–diplomatic but also clearly stating that the pontiff’s invocation of the Cure’ d’Ars as a model priest may not be terribly relevant for working priests today. The Cure’, a.k.a. St. Jean Marie Vianney, was a nineteenth-century French priest whose quasi-monastic existence hardly…

The debate over the President’s “common ground” approach is focusing on two aspects: reducing abortion by supporting pregnant women, and reducing unintended preganancies by promoting sex ed and contraception. With the package of legislation having been hashed over, the divide now is on whether to present both elements to Congress in a single package or to…

First, Benedict XVI confirms that tests done on bone fragments from a tomb venerated as that of the Apostle–but often considered more legend than fact–belonged to a man who lived between the first and second century. “This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul,” the…

Or St. Nowhere’s? In a report disputed by the White House, TIME’s Amy Sullivan writes that the much-anticipated decision on where the Obama’s would worship has been settled, and instead of joining a congregation in Washington, Obama will do like W. and worship at Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David. This ends a long church hunt…

And that was back in 1973! Another fascinating bit of transcription from recently-released tapes of conversations between Nixon and Billy Graham, this time focusing on Nixon’s take on Catholics of the day. At America magazine’s blog, Jim Martin has the goods. The set-up is Graham and Nixon discussing prospects for a worldwide church body to…
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