Over Labor Day weekend, some members of the Winnebago County Board designed a plan to tear down a Catholic Church, St. Mary's Oratory, and replace it with a new county jail. The Catholic League jumped into the fray, as did Rockford Bishop Thomas Doran, and in no time the plan was scratched. Here's what happened. On [...]
On September 9, the Archdiocese of Boston agreed to pay $85 million to settle the hundreds of lawsuits filed against it by persons saying they were abused by priests. It took the leadership of Archbishop Sean O'Malley to bring closure to the scandal that he inherited. By working tirelessly with victims and their lawyers, he was [...]
William A. Donohue Over the summer, five bishops from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in closed-door session with prominent Catholic men and women from the business community. Also in attendance were a number of distinguished Catholic scholars and leaders. Regarding the latter, all were aligned with the more "progressive" wing of the [...]
By Edward Klein In the faint pewter light of an Irish dawn, a young man riding bareback on an old gray draft horse emerged from a fog bank on the outskirts of New Ross, a river port south of Dublin. A cold, hard rain pelted the sides of his horse, and the fog roiled up above [...]
On August 28, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind held a press conference outside Fox News Corp. headquarters demanding that 20th Century Fox not distribute Mel Gibson's film "The Passion." Hikind, who never saw the movie, asserted that the film "resurrects the age-old canard of deicide," flouting the Vatican's 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate, which denied that all [...]
An influential Vatican official, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, has spoken highly of "The Passion." Interviewed in the Italian publication, La Stampa, Cardinal Hoyos said the film is not only not anti-Semitic, it is deeply inspiring. "I felt moments of deep spiritual intimacy with Jesus Christ," he said. He encouraged all Catholic priests to see the movie. This [...]
A brief of amici curiae has been filed before the U.S. Supreme Court by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in the case of Locke v. Davey. The brief argues that it is unconstitutional for the state of Washington to disqualify a student "from an otherwise available [...]
On September 10, leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) went on record offering their "general support" for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The amendment is being pushed by those who want to defeat attempts to codify homosexual marriage in some states. [...]
Jay Milano, a victims' lawyer who is suing the Cleveland Diocese for racketeering, has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to disqualify any Catholic judge from presiding over his lawsuit. Milano maintains that from the day Catholic youngsters enter a parochial school, they are taught that an attack on their Church is an attack on God. "We [...]
We've long suspected it, but now we know it to be true: there is an unsavory link between some victims' lawyers and some victims' advocacy groups. In the September 15 edition of Forbes magazine, Dan Lyons detailed with precision how some lawyers for alleged victims of priestly misconduct have generously donated to victims' advocacy groups. For [...]
