The bishops against women club

imgresNow that the Sistine Chapel’s makeshift chimney has been dismantled, the American Sunday talk show pundits have speculated on Pope Francis’ potential, and all the religion correspondents have departed Vatican City for home, it is time to reopen a mystifying chapter in the most recent saga of American Catholic ecclesiastical missteps. As Al Jazeera reports:

“On the eve of President Obama’s signature on the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, five leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops earlier last week attacked the necessary legislation. This move not only confirms that the bishops are out of touch with American society, but also proves that they are ready to disregard their own longstanding justice commitments – and millions of domestic violence victims – for the sake of a few unrelated legal points. Continue reading “The bishops against women club”

The Magdalene laundry slave women

imgresAs if the Catholic Church doesn’t have enough problems.

As many as 15,000 Irish women and girls were reportedly held in slave-like conditions in nunneries, where they were held against their will and forced to work in laundries without pay under harsh conditions through the late 1990s.

Originally established to incarcerate Protestant women and girls, the laundries became prisons run by Catholic nuns to house “fallen” women or those “troubled” with problems like learning disabilities. It seems God works in mysterious ways. Continue reading “The Magdalene laundry slave women”

Six non-European cardinals named

For a faith that has seen it’s share of bad publicity in recent years, the Catholic church seem moving in the right direction on at least one front. Today Pope Benedict XVI has officially named six new non-European cardinals to the body that will elect his successor, saying the move underlined the Catholic Church’s diversity.”

This the total number cardinals (of a total of 117) from outside Europe to 47 percent. Al Jazeera reports that “The 85-year-old pontiff presided over the ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica that elevated the six prelates to the Church’s College of Cardinals on Saturday.

The body “presents a variety of faces, because it expresses the face of the universal Church”, he said in a development that has been welcomed by critics concerned that the college has become increasingly Euro-centric under Benedict. Continue reading “Six non-European cardinals named”

First Native American saint

This week the Vatican will canonize its first ever Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha. As the Catholic Church has already bestowed such status on 10,000 other people, this is a pretty big deal. A member of the Mohawk tribe who lived in the seventeenth century, Kateri was chosen for canonization following the miraculous recovery of a five-year old boy in 2006. Large numbers of Catholic Native Americans from the US and Canada will make the journey to Rome to witness the recognition of their own personal Saint by Pope Benedict XVI. Coverage of the canonizaton appears in the current edition Time News Feed, and elsewhere. As Sorcha Pollack writes,  “Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as Lily of the Mohawks, was born in 1656 in what is today upstate New York. Continue reading “First Native American saint”