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You can't put lipstick on a pig but you sure can clean it up.

The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics has released a statement in response to the synod on the familyGay Catholics have said they are encouraged by the Pope’s closing address to the synod and are hopeful for a “new era” of pastoral care. The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics (GNRC) said that while it was not always happy with terminology used to describe gay people, it felt it was the “beginning of a new era of inclusive pastoral care for and with LGBT people and their families.” It added it hoped dioceses could take on this attitude across the world. In...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, ending a contentious bishops' meeting on family issues, on Saturday excoriated immovable Church leaders who "bury their heads in the sand" and hide behind rigid doctrine while families suffer. The pope spoke at the end of a three-week gathering, known as a synod, where the bishops agreed to a qualified opening toward divorcees who have remarried outside the Church but rejected calls for more welcoming language toward homosexuals. It was the latest in a series of admonitions to bishops by the pontiff, who has stressed since his election in 2013 that the 1.2 billion-member...

ROME, October 23, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has combined the Vatican’s existing departments, or dicasteries, for life, the family, and the laity into one, a move which two prominent Catholic pro-life leaders decry as a “demotion” for life and family issues. Pope Francis said in statement released yesterday, “I have decided to establish a new Dicastery with competency for Laity, Family and Life, that will replace the Pontifical Council for the Laity and the Pontifical Council for the Family.” He later added the Pontifical Academy for Life in the new dicastery. It follows recommendations of a relatively new Council...

VATICAN CITY — Catholic bishops called Saturday for a more welcoming church for cohabitating couples, gays and Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried, endorsing Pope Francis’ call for a more merciful and less judgmental church. Bishops from around the world adopted a final document at the end of a divisive, three-week synod on providing better pastoral care for Catholic families. It emphasizes the role of discernment and individual conscience in dealing with difficult family situations, in a win for liberal bishops. Conservatives had resisted offering any wiggle room in determining, for example, whether civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion...

“The word mother can be traced back cleanly to Proto-Indo-European, as can father, brother and sister — it appears in cognate form in languages like Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and so forth, and it may go back further.” —Discussion of the origin of the word “mother” on an internet page (link)“The crisis which the Western society is undergoing has primarily spiritual roots. Secular society without God naively believes that while exploiting only their own proprietary and consumer instincts it would be able to successfully regulate the growth of well-being, thus achieving prosperity and justice. However, the tragic experience of the entire...

When it comes to teenagers, you expect a certain amount of eye rolling and apathy, but put those same kids in a faith formation class for an hour and fifteen minutes at the end of a long school day and right at the dinner hour and youÂ’ll see a level of teenage disinterest that could make you wither on the spot. ThatÂ’s what my husband and I faced when we stood before the 21 high school sophomores we teach at our upstate New York parish.The scene was nothing new and nothing unexpected. We taught most of the same kids...

I first saw the YouTube film from which these photographs are taken over a year ago. I’m surprised it hasn’t gained wider currency. It appears to show the future Pope Francis, then Cardinal Bergoglio, distributing Holy Communion to a crowd at a Mass at San Cayetano, Buenos Aires. On the film, he hands the hosts (i.e., the consecrated wafers that Catholics believe are the body of Christ) to people in the middle of the crowd who stick out their hands. He doesn’t check what happens to them; indeed, the hosts are apparently passing hand to hand. For traditional Catholics, this...

It was the last year of the Oprah show in Chicago and production staff were discussing what stories they hadn’t covered in their 25 year history. One woman spoke up. An “authentic” women’s religious community, she said. Oprah was hesitant. “Do you really think a community like that would be willing to be on my program?” she asked. She gave her staff permission to make some calls. All of the communities they contacted said “no,” except for one: the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.Founded in 1997, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Dominican sisters have always been a community...

The group provided detailed suggestions for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who want to receive the sacramentsWhen presenting its third synod report, the German-language group has said its members felt called to admit that “in an ill-conceived attempt to respect the doctrine of the Church, repeatedly we have had harsh and merciless pastoral attitudes that created suffering, especially for unwed mothers and child born out of wedlock,” cohabiting couples, homosexual persons and those who are divorced and civilly remarried. “As bishops in our Church, we ask forgiveness,” said the report unanimously approved by the group’s members, including Cardinal Gerhard Muller,...

Msgr. Krysztof Charamsa, who was dismissed from his post at the Vatican after he announced that he is an active homosexual with a lover, has been suspended from priestly ministry. The Polish priest, who had been working at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, received notice from the Diocese of Pelplin that he is forbidden to exercise priestly functions or to wear clerical garb until he amends his life. The diocese said that this penalty was designed to cause “a real improvement of life, and it can be reversed.” Charamsa has left Rome and is currently living...

Newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that he is hopes to speak soon with Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, to clarify the implications of his public stance in favor of legal abortion. Trudeau, who is Catholic, has said that political candidates in his Liberal Party must support access to legal abortion. In response Bishop Christian Riesbeck, an Ottawa auxiliary, said that Trudeau should not receive Communion. Archbishop Prendergast has indicated that he wants to meet with Trudeau to discuss his stand. “I don’t think you can make a judgment about someone’s faith position simply by what is said...

Kai Diekmann, Editor-in-chief of Bild Zeitung, talks about his visit to Benedict XVI: “Bright-eyed, smiley, no signs of wearinessA small reception hall, a wooden staircase that leads up to the first floor. The sitting room is welcoming and bright, there is a white leather sofa and a simple seat. A book case that reaches the ceiling, a flat-screen TV with a DVD player and some religious icons on the walls. A coffee table and a piano with a black-and-white photo of his brother Georg. The story Kai Diekmann, Editor-in-chief of Bild Zeitung, wishes to share with his readers is very...

Is the "one and done approach" failing Catholic families?Most parish churches have a regular item in their weekly bulletin that says something of the effect of “please contact the church office to register for Pre-Cana at least six months prior to scheduling a wedding.” Inconvenient? Not terribly—no more so than the other things a couple must do to get married. And many couples look at Pre-Cana marriage preparation as nothing more than another box to check off before the big day. Reception hall reserved? Check. Band booked? Check. Registered for Pre-Cana marriage prep? Check. Is this any way to prepare...

“One of my concerns is for doctrine, and the Pope has said the doctrine will not be touched. I am not a rebel or an opponent of the Pope,” Cardinal Pell says in new interview. In a wide-ranging interview, Australia’s leading prelate affirmed his alliance with Pope Francis, and also stressed that, in a universal church, doctrine does not change from one country to the next. “You cannot have two people in the same situation with the same dispositions; one goes to Communion and it (is) a sacrilege and in the country next-door it is a cause of grace,” said...

Representatives of the Eastern Orthodox churches have completed their fifth preparatory meeting for the upcoming pan-Orthodox council. According to the Moscow Patriarchate, the churches’ representatives approved two documents: “The Orthodox Church’s Relations with the Rest of the Christian World” and “Importance of Fasting and Its Observance Today.”The Russian and Georgian Orthodox delegations refused to agree to the content of a third proposed document, “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Modern World.”The 5th Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference Completes Its Work (Moscow Patriarchate)

The archbishop of New York, part of the ongoing synod on the family, said those striving for virtue also need to feel the Church’s ‘support and encouragement.’VATICAN CITY — Married couples who endure hardships together, same-sex attracted men and women trying to live chastely and engaged couples who choose not to cohabitate: What do all of these people have in common? They’re all striving for holiness, and, according to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, they’re the “new minority” to whom it is important to extend inclusion in the Church. “These wonderful people today often feel themselves a minority, certainly in culture, but...

A recent article in the Atlantic features “a totally ordinary Catholic family,” one composed of two Lesbian ex-nuns and their adopted daughter. They’re campaigning to be accepted in the Roman Catholic Church.The piece makes abundantly clear a fundamental tenet of the LGBT lobby as regards Christianity: it’s not enough to love the sinner; you must also love the sin. The article shows that despite Catholics’ universal openness to gay people in the Church, just welcoming the person without embracing their lifestyle choices—whatever specific behavior they may entail—will never be enough. Nothing less than a full celebration of gay sex as...

Its Church is dogged by empty pews, scandals and a hierarchy beguiled by the latest social trends. Soon it could become little more than a heritage agency for ancient churchesBelgium is one of those countries that show in stark detail the problems facing the Catholic Church in the developed world. Like Ireland or Quebec, it is an example of a once intensely Catholic society where the faith has very rapidly collapsed. The same symptoms as elsewhere – empty churches, scandals, infighting, a hierarchy that passively goes along with current social trends – are as obvious in Belgium as anywhere else...

It was inevitable. Any discussion about marriage and the family during a synod of Catholic bishops was always going to involve questions of morality. Just as the furor around Humanae Vitae was always about much more than contraception, so too do various proposals presented to the 2015 Synod unavoidably touch on the Catholic understanding of the moral life. One phrase that has received much attention before and around the deliberations of the Synod fathers is that of “intrinsically evil acts.” To be clear, there are no intrinsically evil persons. There are sinful acts and sinners: i.e., all of us. But...