On Sunday, federal Judge Haywood Gilliam blocked a Trump administration’s rule that would allow more employers to decline providing women with no-cost birth control on moral or religious grounds. The Department of Health and Human Services issued the new rules that were supposed to go into effect on today. The ruling by Judge Gilliam, from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, put the new policy on hold for 13 states and the District of Columbia
Officials at the New York State Catholic Conference are calling the Reproductive Health Act “worse than we thought it would be.”
Although the weeklong retreat for U.S. Catholic bishops emphasized quiet reflection, several bishops spoke out on social media during the retreat and after it wrapped up Jan. 8 with positive reaction about it and to give shoutouts to the retreat leader, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who has preached to popes and top officials of the Roman Curia for nearly 40 years.
A blockbuster article published by Commonweal magazine this week has taken a critical look at the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clerical abuse released last summer, and claims it is “grossly misleading, irresponsible, inaccurate, and unjust.”
Despite persistent denials that he was unaware of allegations against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, both the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Pittsburgh have confirmed that Cardinal Donald Wuerl was aware of sexual misconduct allegations related to McCarrick and that he took steps to inform the Vatican of them.
When President Donald Trump visits the southern U.S. border today as a part of his push for a security wall between Mexico and the U.S., he will meet with Sister Norma Pimentel, one of the nation’s most active Catholic leaders along the border.
Nationwide efforts to confront human trafficking received a boost in the new year as President Donald Trump signed a bill reauthorizing federal expenditures for prevention and assistance programs across the federal government.
Veteran religion reporter Peter Steinfels has published an in-depth article questioning both the motivation and the methodology of the August Pennsylvania grand jury report, which chronicled seven decades of abuse within the state’s six Catholic dioceses and led to the resignation of one of the nation’s top Catholic cardinals.
No sooner had President Donald Trump finished his Jan. 8 nine-minute speech, his first such event televised in prime time from the Oval Office, about what he called a “crisis” at the border, than Catholic groups and others began tearing apart his arguments.
Tears filled Missy Brassie’s eyes as she talked about the most emotional part of the five-day SEEK2019 conference involving more than 17,000 young adult Catholics from around the world.
