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Patriarch says moves to the US were never approvedSAN DIEGO - The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has suspended 10 priests, including one from El Cajon. Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako issued a decree a month ago, demanding the priests return to Iraq or be suspended. Wednesday was the deadline. The priests, though, are refusing to leave and are now waiting on Pope Francis to tell them what to do next. Dozens of devout Chaldean Catholics attended an emergency mass Wednesday at St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Church in Rancho San Diego, to pray for the 10 priests who have...

In light of new comments from Hillsong’s head pastor, Brian Houston, I wanted to add some additional thoughts to the critical comments I made on Friday. On Saturday, the Christian Post reported the following statement from Brian Houston: I encourage people not to assume a media headline accurately represents what I said at a recent press conference. Nowhere in my answer did I diminish biblical truth or suggest that I or Hillsong Church supported gay marriage. I challenge people to read what I actually said, rather than what was reported that I said. My personal view on the subject of...

To the dismay of California’s people of faith, the California Department of Managed Health Care has reclassified abortion as a “basic health service” under the Affordable Care Act and ordered all insurance plans in the state to begin covering surgical abortions immediately. Even churches are not exempt from funding abortions. Operation Rescue opposes this policy that forces men and women who deeply oppose abortion on religious grounds to fund surgical abortion in violation of their faith, and encourages others to oppose it as well. “Since Obamacare was first introduced, we warned that the day could come when Christians would be...

Islamic State militants have publicly crucified and murdered a teenager they accused of taking photographs of the terror group's headquarters in Syria. Sickening images purportedly taken in the central square of the extremists' de facto capital Raqqa show the battered and bloodstained body of an unnamed 17-year-old boy strapped to a cross. A handwritten placard hangs around the teenager's neck, accusing him of 'apostasy' - the abandonment of his religion - and says he had been crucified for three days after being caught receiving 500 Turkish lira for every photograph he took of an Islamic State military base. The image...

The mental image of a thoroughly Communist Dorothy Day, who remained committed to Marxist notions of the overthrow of government, might be shocking.... [Yet] she maintained her Communist and anarchist views, promoted them, and brought them into the Church Christ founded.... Her goal... was to contribute to the eventual overthrow of the American government, and ... of the Catholic Church hierarchy..... I still remember trying to understand how [Day’s periodical, "The Catholic Worker"] could be both Communist and Catholic.... by the 1970s the FBI dossier on the Catholic Worker Movement was some 581 pages long. The list of Communist revolutionaries,...

Archbishop Chaput Blasts Vatican Debate On Family, Says ‘Confusion Is Of The Devil’ David Gibson | October 21, 2014 NEW YORK (RNS) Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, a leading culture warrior in the U.S. hierarchy, says he was “very disturbed” by the debate over church teachings on gays and remarried Catholics at this month’s Vatican summit, saying it sent a confusing message and “confusion is of the devil.” In a lecture delivered Monday evening (Oct. 20) in Manhattan, Chaput also suggested that in the wake of the rapid series of court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage in more than 30 states, Catholic...

Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island has called on Catholics to “relax” following the tumultuous synod on the family, but nonetheless expressed concern over how bishops, cardinals, and even the pope conducted themselves earlier this month. “Have we learned that it’s probably not a good idea to publish half-baked minutes of candid discussions about sensitive topics, especially when we know that the secular media will hijack the preliminary discussions for their own agendas?” Tobin wrote on the Diocese of Providence website. In a piece entitled “Random Thoughts About the Synod on the Family,” Tobin said that “it’s an enormous...

NEW YORK (RNS) Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, a leading culture warrior in the U.S. hierarchy, says he was “very disturbed” by the debate over church teachings on gays and remarried Catholics at this month’s Vatican summit, saying it sent a confusing message and “confusion is of the devil.” In a lecture delivered Monday evening (Oct. 20) in Manhattan, Chaput also suggested that in the wake of the rapid series of court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage in more than 30 states, Catholic priests might consider opting out of certifying civil marriages as a sign of “principled resistance.” Chaput is expected to...

There are wicked journalists who for a few pence will lie their heads off and distort the truth, who like the unscrupulous Bill Gardner, who after his time in Brighton got a job working for the Daily Telegraph - though I did hear he might be sacked. Fortunately there are also brave courageous journalists like Edward Pentin who hearing a Cardinal make statements which are horrendous publishes them. If journalism is not to be left to the plain wicked, journalists, like theologians and bishops and priests, have to be on the side of truth. Sometimes reporting the truth they have...

The disastrous mid-term relatio seeded confusion, conflict, and lingering bitterness at every level of the Church. But the synod itself was only Act One Upon becoming director of media relations for the American bishops in late 1969, I quickly made a crucial discovery about my new employers. With just a handful of exceptions, the bishops were painfully naïve about the news business, yet convinced they could manipulate the process to get the story told as they wished. They were wrong of course, and eventually they learned that. But in the interim their attempts at manipulation were a continuing source of...

This is a nice summary of how conservative Catholics made sure that the leftists were stopped dead in their tracks in the past synod. http://www.churchmilitant.tv/platform/index.php?ssnID=305&vidID=vort-2014-10-21

Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old newlywed with a diagnosed terminal illness is choosing to end her life in a dignified manner. Since then, there have been an overwhelming response from my fellow Christians decrying this decision, an Open Letter from Kara Tippetts hosted by wildly popular author Ann Voskamp, as well a letter from renowned evangelical influencer, Joni Eareckson Tada. I don't face a terminal illness diagnosis, but I am drawn to this conversation because I believe the brutality of such an impossible decision owns potential for profound beauty. To consider how to die is a tandem reflection on...

Normally a synod of Catholic bishops does not provide fireworks rivaling the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley's boys in blue ran up the score on the radicals in Grant Park. But, on Oct. 13, there emanated from the Synod on the Family in Rome a 12-page report from a committee picked by Pope Francis himself -- and the secondary explosions have not ceased. The report recognized the "positive aspects of civil unions and cohabitation" and said "homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community." As for Catholics who divorce and remarry without...

- "Hanna Rosin is the founder of DoubleX and a writer for the Atlantic. She is also the author of The End of Men. Follow her on Twitter. I had an abortion. I was not in a libertine college-girl phase, although frankly it’s none of your business. I was already a mother of two, which puts me in the majority of American women who have abortions. Six out of 10 are mothers, which makes sense, because a mother could not fool herself into believing that having another baby was no big deal. I start the story this way because Katha...

Today, 21st October, is the Feast Day of the Blessed Charles (or Karl) of Austria, beatified in 2004 by the pope Saint John Paul the Great....While devout to be sure, the young Archduke Karl von Habsburg (1887-1922) was also endearingly earnest as he studied his every sequentially-bestowed dynastic honour as though he was a medieval knight-errant preparing to seek the Sacred Grail....Over fewer than two years in power, he outlawed brutal army punishments and stopped submarines from attacking civilian shipping. Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, he established sweeping domestic reforms including the world’s first governmental department of...

"Today, many Christians, myself included, experience a quiet uneasiness about attending divine services in a strange church; they are appalled at the thought of the half-understood theories, the amazing and tasteless personal opinions of this or that priest that they will have to endure during the homily--to say nothing of the personal liturgical inventions to which they will be subjected. No one goes to church to hear someone else's personal opinions. I am simply not interested in what fantasies this or that individual priest may have spun for himself regarding questions of Christian faith. They may be appropriate for an...

50. Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony? Language from the Relatio rejected by the Synod. Over at the blog That the Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill, that is a mouthful, brings news of this latest development: London’s Catholic Churches are already undergoing a...

COMMENTARY: Evaluating the Synod by Pope Francis’ Own Evangelical PrinciplesOn the middle Sunday of the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization, every Catholic parish in the world providentially focused on Jesus’ parable about the kingdom of heaven. Jesus compared his kingdom to a banquet, for which he sent his servants to invite everyone, the good and the bad. But then the king entered the banquet hall, found someone not dressed in a wedding garment and had him bound and cast into the darkness outside (Matthew 22:1-14). The parable summarizes the...

Every few years the debate over reforming Islam bubbles up from the depths of a culture that largely censors any suggestion that Islam needs reforming.

"No zeal for the lost, no hunger for the Word, no burden to pray...strangers to holiness." This describes a large number of the people who sit in our church pews today. This is the result of our man-centered gospel which is being served up in our pulpits. We have multitudes of lukewarm Christians with a false sense of security regarding their salvation. This man-centered gospel also has a massive casualty rate. It's producing 90 backsliders per 100 decisions. These people are not really backsliders. I would like to suggest they have never slidden forward. These people have not been warned...