Pontifications

By choosing the longtime Senate insider and foreign policy expert, Joe Biden, as his running mate, Barack Obama is also gambling that having a Catholic on the ticket will draw in some of the fence-sitting Catholics whose votes will be key to success in November. Peeling away a few evangelical votes, or hoping for a low turnout…

Okay, add to the list of modern annoyances in sacred spaces checking email and texting. Part of the Crackberry, er, Blackberry culture (which I have recently joined) I guess. Lord, save me. It may be hard. AOL’s Fourth Annual Email Addiction Survey shows that more Americans are checking email while driving, in the bathroom, on…

While Cardinal George, the president of the U.S. bishops conference, is otherwise occupied (see below), Denver’s indefatigable archbishop, Charles J. Chaput, is continuing to take the lead (it seems to me) as the most visible and outspoken member of the American hierarchy. Chaput is at it again today with a strongly-worded post at the First…

The Chicago Tribune, no Catholic basher–despite what the Sun-Times would have you believe–goes right up to the threshold, seeming to pose the question without giving an answer in an editorial today, “Confessions and Consequences”: The cardinal should insist that his disclosures lead by example. He doesn’t wield power over the U.S. bishops, but the job…

The Chicago Tribune has the disturbing deposition by Cardinal Francis George and other coverage detailing what is being described as a “cover-up” of an abusive priest–but AFTER George presided over the passage of the 2002 charter to protect children, and AFTER he said he had cleared out any abusive priests in accord with the charter.…

Here on NPR, Jesuit priest and prolific author (check out his bestseller, “My Life with the Saints”) James Martin takes up the issue of the new prayers that will be coming (not too soon) to a Mass near you. (See this earlier post for a side-by-side look at the changes.) Among Jim’s gems: By the…

Perhaps it doesn’t beat what they’re building for “Angels & Demons,” but a diligent reader dug up a photo of the famous Inflatable Church that we spoke about here earlier. Check out a cool gallery of pictures here. And note that they cover the entire Catholic experience because they also have an Inflatable Pub. The…

The New York Times has a piece today about Obama and the Dems and their efforts to appeal to Catholic voters who may be turned off by the party’s pro-choice dogmatism. It includes comments from the much-pilloried pro-life, yet pro-Obama, Doug Kmiec. I expect this won’t be the last of these sorts of stories. On…

Evidently tired of dragging down the Catholic Church, blockbuster novelist Dan Brown has apparently decided to found his own religion–and yet it looks an awful lot like the one he has accused of everything that has ever gone wrong in the History of the World! Hey, if you can’t beat ’em…So will Ron Howard be…

Check this out this Reuters piece about a blow-up church (real deal, Catholic and consecrated) and convent for a bit of beach ministry in Italy: ROME (Reuters) – Catholic nuns and priests in Italy are following their flocks to the beach this summer, establishing an inflatable church and a beach-convent in the sands to lure…

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