IT ALL STARTED when we heard unconfirmed reports that the pope had met with Kim Davis in a private audience during his visit to Washington. Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, recently denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds. Since same-sex civil marriage is now legal in the United States and county clerks are required by law to issue licenses, her actions sparked controversy – and rumor – especially after Davis met with the pope.
As 270 bishops engage in dialogue on the pastoral care of the person and the family during the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Catholics are reflecting on the family’s vocation.
High school football players battle racism on and off the field in “Woodlawn” (Pure Flix), an entertaining and inspirational film that’s based on a true story and appropriate for most age groups.
The great Piazza San Pietro in Rome is a five-minute walk from where I’m living during Synod-2015. About three-quarters of the Square is bounded by the famous Bernini colonnades, which reach out from the Vatican basilica as if to embrace the world. Along the open “front” of the Piazza and along the perimeter of the colonnades, a broad white stripe is embedded in the street. The casual visitor might mistake it for a kind of “No Parking” sign.
A group of pilgrims attended the Passion Play in Sordevolo, Italy, with the Diocese of Brooklyn. The group’s spiritual leaders were Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Chappetto, Msgr. Steven Aguggia, pastor of St. Margaret Church, Middle Village, and Father Gerard Sauer, diocesan pilgrimage director.
ROME. SINCE POPE Francis announced that two Synods would examine the contemporary crisis of marriage and the family, and work to devise more evangelically dynamic responses to that crisis, a lot of attention has focused on issues of Catholic discipline: How does the Church determine that a marriage never existed, and thus grant a decree of nullity? What is to be done about the sacramental situation of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics? How does the Church best prepare its sons and daughters for marriage?
BY THE TIME “Nobody Don’t Like Yogi,” Ben Gazzara’s one-man paean to Yogi Berra reached the New York stage in the Fall of 2003, I had already joined the ranks of the many who agreed with the sentiment in that play’s title. But ’twas not always thus.
THE XIV ORDINARY General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family begins with Mass in St. Peter’s on Oct. 4. No synod in modern Catholic history has drawn such worldwide press attention or generated such controversy within the Church – with the possible exception of the special synod called by John Paul II to examine Vatican II on the 20th anniversary of its conclusion.
SITTING AT A WRITING-desk in the White House on Dec. 11, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt was an unhappy camper. In previous letters, he addressed his correspondent as “Dear Maria.” Now, it was “Mrs. Storer” who would be on the receiving end of the presidential wrath.
Guest columnist Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk addresses how Kim Davis’ measured actions at the clerk’s office in Rowan County, Ky., offer a coherent and courageous response to chaotic attempts to undermine marriage and the rule of law.
