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This week a grand jury reported on documents from six Catholic Church dioceses in Pennsylvania that revealed 300 “predator priests” have been accused of sexually abusing over 1,000 children. The grand jury report states: “We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands. Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent… But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and...

MEDIA STATEMENTBoy Scouts of America Monday, Jan. 28, 2013 Attributable to: Deron Smith, Director of Public Relations“For more than 100 years, Scouting’s focus has been on working together to deliver the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training. Scouting has always been in an ongoing dialogue with the Scouting family to determine what is in the best interest of the organization and the young people we serve.“Currently, the BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation. This would mean there would no longer be any national policy regarding sexual orientation, and...

While the title says it all, I thought a goodbye was in order. While I've been a FReeper for well over a decade, I must declare that it is time to part ways. While I have the greatest respect for a great many of you, the days where I can in good conscience remain silent about the issues that set me apart from the rest of FReeperdom have past. For clarity, or perhaps catharsis, I'm not entirely certain which, I'll lay them out on the table an call the ZOT™ down upon myself. The racism: I just can't handle it...

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday that he hoped a letter he plans to send to Irish Catholics about the child sex abuse scandal in the church would help with "repentance, healing and renewal" there. Benedict acknowledged the Irish church had been "severely shaken" as a result of the crisis and said he was "deeply concerned." However, speaking in English at his weekly general audience, the pontiff did not make any mention of the issue in his homeland, Germany. The scandal in Germany, where some 300 former Catholic students have come forward with claims of physical or sexual...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Gay rights activists and liberal Catholics girded on Wednesday for a long battle over the Vatican's tougher stance on homosexuality, predicting the Church would lose thousands of followers in the United States.

Code: ZE05020104Date: 2005-02-01Make Sure Seminarians Can Live in Celibacy, Says PopeSuggests That Specialists Be Used to Verify ThisVATICAN CITY, FEB. 1, 2005 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II says the emotional maturity of candidates for the priesthood, and their ability to live in celibacy, must be verified from the moment they enter the seminary. The Pope made this proposal in the message he sent today to Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, on the occasion of the Vatican dicastery's plenary session in Rome. "Already from the moment of the admission of young men to the seminary, their ability...

The Rainbow Sash Movement recently issued a national call for people who oppose the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality to support the Movement on May 15, 2005 by attending church wearing a Rainbow Sash. Will there even be a few renegade bishops who distribute Holy Communion to those obviously rejecting a tenet of the faith? Sadly, the answer is likely to be yes. Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles approves of giving Holy Communion to Rainbow Sashers. And last year Rainbow Sashers refrained from wearing sashes to the Pentecost Sunday Mass at Cardinal Mahony’s Cathedral, to say "thank you."...