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According to a footnote in my Challoner-Rheims version of the New Testament, St. Paul ultimately appeals to the authority of custom in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 to justify his position on women covering their heads in church. (Certainly Bishop Challoner’s interpretation of Scripture must be just as valid as hfr’s.) St. Paul’s argument was appropriate for the time and the culture in which he lived because at that time, women were seen as inferior and subordinate to men and as needing to veil themselves in public as a sign of this inferiority and subordination. However, the advice which he gave to the Churches of Corinth in the first century no longer applies to the Church in this century because the status of women and custom have changed.

The Church’s rule that women cover their heads at Mass was not a divinely ordained rule (like the male priesthood), it was not a Tradition with a capital “T”. If it had been, the Church would not have changed it. It was, in fact, an external aspect of the liturgy, which was changed when the times changed.

Priests should certainly exhort women (and everyone else as well) to dress appropriately for Mass but it isn’t necessary for them to demand that women cover their heads in order to achieve that end.

The idea of the cathedral in Sir Lanka mandating that women cover their heads in church because too many women are attending Mass dressed inappropriately or even immodestly is an overreaction. It would be more to the point for the priests there to simply prohibit inappropriate attire at Mass.

The arguments that you put forth in favor of women veiling themselves are not at all compelling. Veiling made sense in earlier times when women did not go out in public without covering their heads since church is a public place but it really makes no sense today when that is no longer the custom. St. Paul lived in an age when it was considered improper for women not to cover their heads in public. But that is not the case today. It was also customary in St. Paul’s time for men and women to be segregated in churches in synagogues. Do you think that we should also go back to that rule? Think of how utterly distracting it must be for men and boys to have women and girls sitting in close proximity to them at Mass!

The argument about the angels is simply ridiculous.

The bottom line is that veiling is no longer the rule and is no longer the custom. It is simply a preference. If women want to veil themselves at Mass because they want to do that, fine. If not, that is fine as well.

The faithful should absolutely be discouraged from dressing inappropriately or immodestly for Mass, or even from dressing too casually but I don’t think that this issue should be linked to the issue of women covering their heads at Mass.

Your numbered list of points is not documentation, evidence, or proof. It is a list of your personal opinions and it is not convincing.

If I thought that you were genuinely interested in having a dialog with Catholics about the clerical sex abuse scandal and its effect on the Church’s moral authority, then I might take you seriously. But it is clear from the provocative, insulting comments that you are making about the Church and the dismissive way that you are responding to Catholics who are trying to engage in a rational debate with you, that you aren’t interested in this. You just want a forum for bashing the Church and not just the Church as an institution but the members of the Church since you called Catholics “cockroaches.” And don’t try to deny this when in the sentence before that you said “. . . the Church(s) [sic] and its members went to great length to hide, not take responsibility, and avoid prosecution.”

Please take your anti-Catholic bigotry elsewhere.

In 2006 Republicans lost several statewide elections, including the governorship, because of a scandal involving a relatively small number of Republicans in then Gov. Taft’s administration. (Taft was a Republican). Naturally, the scandal was blamed on the fact that the people involved in it Republicans and the Republicans as a party were corrupt. Republicans who were not even involved in the scandal lost their races in 2006 and did not fare any better in 2008.

It’s interesting that few people now are blaming the scandal in Cuyahoga County on the fact that the Democrats have been running the county for decades and that all of this power has corrupted them. They have built a political machine that passes out favors and jobs, that fixes elections, and that enriches itself at the public’s expense. That is business as usual for the Democrats in Cuyahoga County. I had hoped that voters might wise up and vote the Democrats out of office but I don’t think that they have since the county government reform bill which the voters passed was actually drafted by Democrats who hold offices in county government.

Since you obviously are not a Catholic, I will chalk up your post up to being uninformed.

In the Diocese of Cleveland, Catholic parishes pay either 10% or 16% of what they receive in their weekly collections to the diocese. They do not pay anything to Rome. Once a year a voluntary collection is taken up for Rome but no one is required to contribute to it.

Bishop Lennon of Cleveland is closing churches because there are fewer priests and because there are fewer Catholics in the diocese than there used to be (800,000 today as opposed to 1,000,000 in 1980). Moreover, out of that 800,000 Catholics who still live in this diocese, only one fourth to one third of them actually attend church on a regular basis and contribute financially to the support of their parishes. Fifty years ago, almost three quarters of all Catholics did so.

The problem has been further aggravated by the migration of Catholics out of old city neighborhoods to the suburbs over the last thirty years.

In other words, the diocese is downsizing because it has more parishes than it has Catholics to support them or priests to run them. This is especially true in urban neighborhoods, which have parishes that are located in close proximity to other parishes. The previous bishop probably should have started to close some of these parishes but he did not want to do that and become unpopular.

Finally, St. Peter’s is not a large church by any means and money is not the only or even primary issue in the bishop’s decision to close churches. The bishop gave every parish in the diocese the opportunity to participate in this process but it is my understanding that St. Peter’s refused to do so.

Bob Kloos is also a former priest and, unfortunately, those men are almost always heterodox. My son had the misfortune of attending a Confirmation retreat several years ago, which Mr. Kloos conducted. There was nothing traditional or even Catholic about this retreat. Mr. Kloos and his female sidekick gave the eighth graders feathers which they pranced around with. Needless to say, there weren’t any traditional prayers or devotions at this event.

Do people who say that mean that illegal aliens are contributing $4-$6 billion each year in taxes to offset the costs of all the benefits they receive?

The problem, of course, is that Christians in Muslim countries are not free now to practice their religion. They don't have rights. They are dhimmis whose right to practice their own religion or even to exist at all is completely dependent upon the whims of the Muslim majority.

I hate to disagree with the Vatican here but regardless of whether or not France passes this law against Muslim women wearing veils in public, Christians in Muslim countries will continue to be persecuted.

One can make the argument that this law violates the separation of church and state but I don't think one can argue that not passing this law will somehow protect and bolster the rights of Christians in Muslim countries.

The fact that the National Enquirer got one story right doesn’t mean that we should now start believing what we read in the tabloids.

I think the Birthers need to let go of this issue and move on to real problems, such as Obama’s policies because, to be frank, they sound like kooks. The fact that their claim is now being covered by The Globe, doesn’t give them any credibility. It just makes them look kookier to have their views published by a supermarket tabloid that regularly runs stories about UFOs and other nonsense.

Why did the USCCB have a homosexual on its payroll? Shouldn’t the people who work for the Church be of sound moral character? Shouldn’t they uphold the Church’s moral teachings? It is obvious that at the very least, this former employee does not agree with the Church’s teachings on morality. He had no business whatsoever working for the USCCB and it was truly shortsighted and scandalous that the bishops ever would have hired someone like him.

And just in case anyone is wondering whether or not I think that the Church should “discriminate” against homosexuals, I think it should.

I don’t know what planet you’re living on but it can’t be this one.

Please name one priest in this country who has been found guilty of sexually abusing children, who has not yet been punished by the Church and who is still a priest in good standing. While it is true that up until about ten years ago, the bishops failed to remove these men from ministry and covered up the scandal, that is no longer the case. The pendulum has truly swung in the opposite direction from the bishops not doing enough to the bishops doing too much because there are some innocent priests, who have been falsely accused, and who have been removed from ministry even though there is no credible evidence that they are guilty.

The anti-Catholic bigots who are using the sex abuse scandal as an excuse to attack the Church, need to find something else to complain about because they are no longer credible.

"An oath of secrecy was to be taken by all members of the tribunal; violation incurred a penalty of automatic excommunication. The ecclesiastical penalty for violation of secrecy by the accused priest was automatic suspension a divinis, although he was free to discuss with his defence counsel (Section 13). Unless violation of secrecy occurred after an explicit procedural warning given in the course of their examination (Section 13; and cf. Section 23 concerning the person denouncing solicitation: '… before the person is dismissed, there should be presented to the person, as above, an oath of observing the secret, threatening the person, if there is a need, with an excommunication reserved to the Ordinary or to the Holy See"), no ecclesiastical penalties were to be imposed on the accuser(s) and witnesses. 'These matters are confidential only to the procedures within the Church, but do not preclude in any way for these matters to be brought to civil authorities for proper legal adjudication. The charter for the Protection of Children and Young People of June, 2002, approved by the Vatican, requires that credible allegations of sexual abuse of children be reported to legal authorities.'[7]" [emphasis mine]

In other words, only the members of the tribunal who adjudicated the case of priest accused of sexual misconduct were sworn to secrecy because the proceedings of the canonical trial were supposed to be secret to protect the all of the parties involved. However, witnesses and victims were not bound by any seal of secrecy and had every right to bring these matters to the attention of civil authorities. Moreover, this document was issued in 1962, not 2001 as you claimed. It looks like you got all of your facts wrong.

Well, there is no way that Dr. Eckleburg can provide any documentation or evidence for what he is claiming because there isn’t any. This is one of the most outrageous lies about the Church that I have ever heard but I guess Satan and his fellow anti-Catholics will stoop to anything to try to discredit the Church.

This is completely false. The Vatican has never had a policy that imposes excommunication on Catholics who report cases of sex abuse by priests to the civil authorities. This is just another rabid, slanderous attack on the Church by a bigot.

You are showing prejudice against the Catholic Church because you are falsely accusing the Vatican of having covered up the scandal and of having obstructed justice in the cases of priests who were accused of misconduct with minors. Again, your ignorance and your bigotry are showing. Heck, you won’t even capitalize the words “Catholic Church,” which are a proper noun.

This whole argument against the Pope and the Vatican in their handling of the sex abuse crisis boils down to the claim that they have not done enough, which is a pretty weak claim. There is absolutely NO evidence that the Vatican ever returned guilty priests to ministry or covered up the scandal. If there were, that evidence would have been brought to light years ago when the media uncovered the scandal.

You may not be singling out the Pope for criticism here but you are including him in your unjust, blanket condemnation of the Vatican’s alleged failure to handle the clerical sex abuse scandal. Apparently, you did not even read this article. As Father Fessio points out, the Vatican does not become involved in cases involving the discipline of any priest unless the priest himself appeals his case to Rome. Under canon law, it is the responsibility of the bishop of the diocese to handle the cases of priests who are accused of wrongdoing. If the priest disagrees with the decision of the bishop, he may appeal the bishop’s decision to Rome but Rome is not going to become involved unless he does.

Here is another little fact you may not be aware of. Most of the priests in the U.S. who were accused of abusing minors, were never tried under canon law because the bishops in the U.S. did not want Rome to become involved in these cases via the appeal process that is part of canon law. The bishops thought that they could better handle the crisis by sending accused priests off for treatment, reassigning them to other parishes after being “successfully” treated, and keeping the whole thing out of the press. If you want to blame anyone for this scandal blame the priests who were involved in the abuse and the bishops who covered up their crimes. Don’t blame the Vatican.

It is clear that certain people are exploiting and fanning the clerical sex abuse scandal to promote the Modernist agenda of getting rid of the hierarchy and creating a lay-run church. The Church does not need their brand of radical change, a change that would turn it into something like the mainline Protestant denominations, which are dying because they don’t stand for anything any more. Fortunately, the Pope and the bishops are not going to cave into calls for this kind of change. The Church will weather this storm as it has weathered many others.

The problem with this idea is that the liberals don’t want to substitute the VAT for the income tax, they want to add it to the income tax. There is no way that the Democrats would ever vote to repeal the income tax but it is very likely that they would vote to impose this onerous VAT on the American public, while keeping the present tax code, regardless of the disastrous effects it would have on the economy.

This is an excellent point. While good works and social justice are important, they should not be the primary focus of the Church. There is too much emphasis on the horizontal, on the love of neighbor and not on the love of God, which, after all, makes love of neighbor possible.

Really, this Catholic was forgiven without going to sacramental confession to confess this serious sin? Please note her disparagement of the fact that her mother had brought "religious" reinforcements so that she could confess her sins. Apparently, she didn't confess and it doesn't sound as though she returned to the Church.

She is lucky that she was given a second chance and that her child survived. But this supposed "near death" experience does not take the place of genuine repentance. As a Catholic, even a lapsed Catholic, she is held to a higher standard than just wishing her sins away. She apparently didn't have the humility to ask for God's forgiveness, she just presumed that she received it because she regretted her act but regretting one's act is not genuine contrition.