Eric Agustin’s eight children used to call the first day of the week “Party Sunday.” The family would wake up, attend a short morning Mass at a Catholic parish near their house, then head home for lunch and an afternoon of relaxing and watching football. But this summer, the family made a “big switch,” one … Read more
The reports hit the Roman Catholic Church in rapid succession: Analyses of cellphone data obtained by a conservative Catholic blog seemed to show priests at multiple levels of the Catholic hierarchy in both the United States and the Vatican using the gay hookup app Grindr. The first report, published late last month, led to the … Read more
In the summer of 2001, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to find what we called “the traditional Latin Mass,” the form of Roman Catholic worship that stretched back centuries and was last authorized in 1962, before the Second Vatican Council changed everything. Back then, conservative Catholics called people who sought it out “schismatics” and … Read more
Facing more than 200 lawsuits over sexual abuse allegations, the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island said on Thursday that it filed for bankruptcy, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States to do so. The diocese, which serves about 1.5 million Catholics, said it was seeking financial protection in part because of … Read more
Rain fell in New York City four days before Christmas of 2018. Francis M. had planned to be in the city that day for business, but he had dutifully put aside time when asked to answer questions at the Archdiocese of New York offices about his experiences with “Uncle Ted” — former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. … Read more
Bernard Preynat, 75, received a five-year sentence after admitting to assaulting boys over a 20-year period, a scandal that embroiled a top cardinal. A former Roman Catholic priest in France was convicted and sentenced on Monday to five years in prison for sexually assaulting dozens of Boy Scouts several decades ago, in a case that … Read more
He said Friday that politicians who are enraged against homosexuals, gypsies and Jews remind Hitler. It is no accident that sometimes there is a resurgence of typical Nazi symbols, Francis said in a speech to the participants of an international conference on criminal law. And I must confess that when I hear a speech (from) … Read more
Excerpt from Ross Douthat’s interview with Cardinal Burke: It was also in discussing the Amazonian synod that Burke brought up the specter that hangs over Francis-era debates, the idea of a schism in the church. Burke: While the final document is less explicit in the embrace of pantheism, it does not repudiate the statements in … Read more
Some years ago, when I was younger and somewhat more excitable, I wrote a series of essays about Pope Francis’s liberalizing efforts, arguing that the supreme pontiff’s choices risked a schism in the Catholic Church. At the time my argument was criticized by Catholics on both sides of the church’s theological-political divides. Liberal Catholics accused me of hysteria, disloyalty … Read more
She has watched as diocese after diocese has identified Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children. She saw the victims who, after confronting decades of church silence, could edge toward a sense of closure as bishops apologized and publicly named clergy members who abused them. Yet for Janet Cleary Klinger, the silence has continued. She said she … Read more