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BALTIMORE - Following Monday’s shock announcement that the Vatican has requested the U.S. Catholic Bishops to delay voting on new standards for bishop accountability, survivors of sexual abuse and bishop accountability activists decried the move as “totally unacceptable.” Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, called the move a “preemptive strike” by the Vatican against U.S. bishops as they seek to respond to the current crisis of sexual abuse and its cover-up “in a modest way.” Peter Isley, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse who now works with the organization Ending Clergy Abuse, said the decision from the Vatican effectively means, “We...

DENVER — Stephen Szutenbach had never kissed anyone when, he says, a priest he had befriended in the late 1990s started making sexual advances. Szutenbach was 18, a devout Catholic teenager interested in the seminary; the Rev. Kent Drotar was a 39-year-old ranking administrator at St. John Vianney Seminary. "I was so sheltered and I was very uncomfortable because … he's in charge," Szutenbach said. "He's the person who could say, 'I don't think he's fit to be in the seminary.' " But the young man did get into the seminary. And in the ensuing four years, he experienced repeated...

VATICAN CITY, November 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican’s news website has showcased an interview with a pro-abortion religious sister in its coverage of the recent U.S. elections. Sister Bernadette Reis of Vatican News Service interviewed Sister Simone Campbell, leader of the left-wing “Nuns on the Bus”, about the election of over 100 women to the House of Representatives. The interview appeared November 8 on the vaticannews.va website. Vatican News describes itself on its website as the “information system of the Holy See.” Campbell, 73, has stated publicly that she believes abortion should remain legal, which both contradicts Church teaching...

BALTIMORE (ChurchMilitant.com) - At the Silence Stops Now rally in Baltimore on Tuesday, international child protection attorney Liz Yore, Esq. called out, "We need to protect the children!" "And like the courageous laity who led the fight to protect the unborn children," she proclaimed, "the laity will lead the fight to protect the children from the sexual predators in the Catholic clergy." "We faithful Catholics," she declared, "are fed up with the dreaded silence of a haughty hierarchy!"  "This haughty hierarchy covered up and participated in the rape of our innocent boys and our precious seminarians," she said, indicating the mass of Catholic bishops meeting across the...

The people of West Virginia have shown their devotion to the culture of life by voting to end taxpayer funding of abortion in the state, said Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, who is apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. Voters approved Amendment 1, which adds to the state constitution: “Nothing in this constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of abortion.” “West Virginians told lawmakers that they stand for life through the passage of Amendment 1,” the archbishop said. “Their voices put an end to decades of taxpayer-funded abortions through Medicaid that have resulted in...

[The following article was originally published in the September issue of The Catholic Inquisitor. With the USCCB meeting presently taking place in Baltimore, along with news that Rome has acted to prevent the bishops’ vote on the proposed Standards of Episcopal Conduct – and this even as the clerical homo-predator scandal dominates Catholic and secular news – it is well worth either reading for the first time or revisiting. – ED.] IntroductionIt’s been more than 23 years since the Cardinal Hans Groër, O.S.Bsex abuse scandal erupted in Vienna, Austria.Recently, while researching the Cardinal McCarrick case, I had occasion to go...

Franciscan Media Image: Statue of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in the portico of the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary in Pompei | photo by Dario Crespi Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini Saint of the Day for November 13 (July 15, 1850 – December 22, 1917)  Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini’s Story Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized. Her deep trust in the loving care of her God gave her the strength to be a valiant woman doing the work of Christ.Refused admission to the religious order which had educated her to be...

Yesterday, during the opening session of the US Bishops’ fall annual meeting, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the American bishops’ conference, announced that the Holy See had intervened to stop the bishops from voting on two measures designed to tackle the Church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis. The Vatican has inexplicably ordered the bishops to wait on taking further action to address the crisis until after a February meeting in which the pope plans to gather the heads of the bishops’ conferences from around the world.Ed Condon of the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports that the crowd of assembled bishops were “visibly surprised”...

Writing in Catholic World Report, Dr. Douglas Farrow, a professor of Theology and Christian Thought at McGill University, joins the growing ranks of “mainstream” commentators who are, at last, one with traditionalists in sounding the alarm about what Farrow calls “the troubling Bergoglio pontificate…”. (I hasten to add that the very emergence of the term “traditionalist” in the life of the Church, signifying simply those Catholics who have continued to believe and practice the unreconstructed Faith after Vatican II, as is their God-given right and duty, demonstrates the gravity of the crisis that has led to this troubling pontificate.) I...

ROME, November 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò today has issued a brief note to the U.S. Bishops, urging them to confront sex abuse as “courageous shepherds” rather than “frightened sheep.” The U.S. Bishops are currently in Baltimore at their much-anticipated fall annual meeting at which they were expected to vote on concrete proposals to hold bishops accountable for their failures after the revelations about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The message from Archbishop Viganò, who served as U.S. Nuncio from October 2011 until April 2016, comes one day after the Vatican insisted that U.S. Bishops not vote at...

The Sins of Priests Msgr. Charles Pope • November 12, 2018 • The Book of the Prophet Malachi is set forth as a kind “riv” (a Hebrew word for a lawsuit, indictment, or controversy) by God. The Lord presents a legal case of sorts, which convicts ancient Israel of numerous deficiencies and calls for their repentance. The case shows a body of evidence that is just as true today as it was then. God has plenty to say and we have much to hear, much of which to repent.As we consider the sins of the priests enumerated below, please...

White Semidouble A HUMBLE LAY BROTHER, Didacus of St. Nicholas is welcomed today by his father St. Francis into the company of Bernardine of Siena and John Capistran, who preceded him by a few years to heaven. The two latter left Italy and the whole of Europe still echoing with their voices, the one making peace between cities in the name of the Lord Jesus, the other urging on the Christian hosts to battle with the victorious Crescent. The age which they contributed so powerfully to save from the results of the great schism and to restore to its...

November 13, 2018 Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin Reading 1 Ti 2:1-8, 11-14 Beloved:You must say what is consistent with sound doctrine,namely, that older men should be temperate, dignified,self-controlled, sound in faith, love, and endurance.Similarly, older women should be reverent in their behavior,not slanderers, not addicted to drink, teaching what is good, so that they may train younger womento love their husbands and children,to be self-controlled, chaste, good homemakers,under the control of their husbands,so that the word of God may not be discredited. Urge the younger men, similarly, to control themselves,showing yourself as a model of good...

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis is about the culture of homosexuality in the priesthood, Mgsr. Charles Pope told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on the World Over program Thursday night (Nov. 8). It’s also about the bishops’ failure to impart the Church’s moral teaching, he said, and is not rooted in clericalism. “We have to be clear, I think, that this is about homosexuality,” Pope stated, adding that that is “a big culture of that in the priesthood.” “It’s also about not preaching and teaching moral teachings of the Church, not insisting upon them,...

Franciscan Media Image: Icon of St. martyr Josaphat Kutsevych, Archbishop of Polotsk | photo by Mykola Swarnyk Saint Josaphat Saint of the Day for November 12 (c. 1580 – November 12, 1623)  Saint Josaphat’s Story In 1964, newspaper photos of Pope Paul VI embracing Athenagoras I, the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, marked a significant step toward the healing of a division in Christendom that has spanned more than nine centuries.In 1595, the Orthodox bishop of Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus and five other bishops representing millions of Ruthenians, sought reunion with Rome. John Kunsevich—who took the name Josaphat in religious...

Welcome to this special report from the bishops' conference in Baltimore where, moments into the meeting, conference President Cdl. Daniel DiNardo dropped the bombshell that Pope Francis has pulled the rug out from under the feet of the U.S. bishops and ordered them to cancel their expected Thursday vote in what to do about the priestly sex abuse crisis, most of which is homosexual predatory abuse. DiNardo appeared disturbed by the orders from the Vatican having been given to him at essentially the last minute late last night. Following that, Papal Nuncio Christophe Pierre got up and essentially said great strides...

The calm before the storm Some are cautiously looking forward to it with hopeful expectations. Others are fearing it with dread and despair.It’s the upcoming reform and restructuring of the Roman Curia. As Massimo Faggioli recently pointed out, it could be one of the most significant structural changes Pope Francis makes in a determined effort -- contested by some members of the hierarchy -- to bring about a more decentralized and synodal Church.The Jesuit pope has spent his entire pontificate working on curia reform with the help of an international group of senior advisors called the Council of Cardinals...

Vatican Cancels US Bishops’ Vote on Sex-Abuse Reform Measures Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, has told the American bishops that they will not vote on two key proposals that had been expected to form the basis for the Church’s response to the sexual-abuse crisis. The news came at the beginning of the U.S. bishops’ conference fall general assembly, meeting in Baltimore Nov. 12-14. The instruction to delay consideration of a new “Code of Conduct” for bishops and the creation of a lay-led body to investigate bishops accused of misconduct came directly from the Holy See, Cardinal...

The Office of Bishop Msgr. Charles Pope • November 11, 2018 • credit: J. Lippelmann, Catholic StandardFortuitously, the first reading for this Monday, which is the day that the annual fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Baltimore begins, speaks to the qualifications of a bishop. The full reading from Titus is as follows:Paul, a slave of God and apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God’s chosen ones and the recognition of religious truth, in the hope of eternal life that God, who does not lie, promised before time began,...

The bishops of America’s 196 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses gathered in Baltimore on Monday morning, meeting for the first time since sexual abuse scandals rocked the church in the summer. They planned to vote on measures to tackle the crisis and prevent further crimes. In the opening minutes of their meeting, the bishops heard a surprising report: Pope Francis had asked them not to vote on any of their proposals. The pope does not want U.S. bishops to act to address bishops' accountability on sexual abuse until he leads a worldwide meeting in February of church leaders, the president of...