Category: Controversies

The rumor about a Catholic Charities board rebellion against the Church has not panned out, at least in public. Instead seven of the Board’s 42 members have quit in the face of the bishops’ stand against gay adoptions. Dom has the details.

I’m astounded. I didn’t expect this at all.
ACI-Prensa’s Alejandro Bermudez says that Fr. Bryan Hehir and the board of the Archdiocese of Boston’s Catholic Charities will announce their refusal to obey directives ending CC’s cooperation in the adoption of children by same-sex couples.
The timing of this event, an in-your-face confrontation to Archbishop (and shortly to be Cardinal) O’Malley, is of course very interesting. If this story is true, our Archbishop is soon going to set the course for the next few years: either a thoroughgoing reform to strengthen the authentic Catholic commitment of diocesan institutions and leaders, or a “truce of 2006”, in Fr. Neuhaus’ phrase, a truce of appeasement.
“Now, Bishop, I’m climbing out on this limb, where you told me not to go, and — here’s a saw, by the way, but don’t you dare use it!”
Update: So far there’s no confirmation of this in the press; is Bermudez mistaken?
Update 2: After dropping this bombshell, Mr. Bermudez says he’s giving up blogging to focus on his regular work. And now he’s removed the blog: why? out of embarrassment?
Dear readers, this story is starting to look like one big mistake. If it really turns out to be spurious, I apologize in advance for having given it more of an airing than it deserves.

Do recent CDF actions against certain claimed private revelations add up to a trend? Times of London commentary points to warnings about the Ida Peerdeman case and the Fr. Gobbi case, and suggests more to come.
Update: Feb. 23: The Pope met today with the bishops of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Some bonehead editor working for NASA, a 24-year-old journalism major, decided to pick a quarrel with a scientist in the agency, demanding that he use the word “theory” every time he mentioned the “Big Bang”.
Perhaps he thought he was defending the concept of a world created by God, but that kind of incompetent help we don’t need. I’m pleased to see the guy’s been exposed for lying about his college degree and has hit the sidewalk.

I’m just returning to Blogdom after the Canadian election and the first things that hits me is Kathy Shaidle’s following protest about Michael Schiavo attempting a new marriage in the Catholic Church. Yes Kathy, I understood how you feel. It’s similar to how I felt during the election every time a pro-abort Catholic politician received Holy Communion.
With this in mind, a debate arose between my colleague Dr. Ed Peters who states that canon law would not permit Michael to attempt this second marriage in the Catholic Church and my fellow Terri-culture-warrior Fr. Rob Johansen who says there is very little a pastor can do in this type of case to refuse the marriage.
For the record, I understand where Fr. Rob is coming from and I very much appreciate what he did to help Terri, her family, and Monsignor through this whole sordid affair, but in terms of canonical interpretation I must side with Ed Peters. Like Kathy Shaidle, I believe this marriage is a sham.
The law is clear: “One who, desirous of marrying a specific third party, is the mandans behind a current spouse’s death, incurs a canonical impediment known as crimen” (1983 CIC 1090 § 1).
This is a scandal. Even if a dispensation was granted from the Holy See, which we do not know, Mr. Schiavo should not have been allowed to remarry in the Catholic Church without some act of public repentance.