In the hours that followed release of a Vatican note outlining the pastoral grounds for same-sex blessings, reactions among American Catholics seemed to run the gamut from styling it as a major step forward to insisting on hitting the brakes, on the grounds that not much has really changed.
Many people view the new year as a fresh start, a time to reset and get on a path to self-improvement often bolstered by resolutions to lose weight or exercise more. But what if people took this same view and applied it to religious resolutions with the aim to be more spiritually fit?
Five years after Pope Francis updated the catechism to clarify the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty, there is “renewed momentum” in the United States to end the practice, a leading Catholic activist said.
A federal court has struck down an Illinois law that restricted what the state’s 100 pregnancy resource centers — but not abortion clinics — could tell patients.
In a year in which the legacy of the world’s first nuclear test has been thrust back into the spotlight due to the success of the Oscar-contending movie “Oppenheimer,” New Mexico’s Catholic archbishop is protesting a recent congressional move to cut long-standing compensation for victims of nuclear testing and uranium mining from a defense bill.
The Supreme Court agreed Dec. 13 to look at a dispute over the availability of a commonly used abortion pill, mifepristone, making it the first abortion case it will hear since its decision overturning Roe v. Wade last year.
About a year after the former bishop of the Diocese of Steubenville, Ohio, publicly announced that a merger with the neighboring Diocese of Columbus was being discussed, generating swift backlash from local priests and laity, the two dioceses have announced that merger talks have resumed.
When Joseph Oden performs in parish choirs, he says he lets the spirit move him — sometimes he’ll cry, sometimes he’ll dance. Other times, like at the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Black Catholic Mass choir debut last week, he’s just filled with “a lot of joy.”
A Nebraska priest has died after being attacked in the rectory of his parish in the early morning before he was to celebrate Mass for the Second Sunday of Advent.
The Texas Supreme Court on Dec. 8 temporarily halted a state’s lower-court order that would have allowed a Texas woman who is 20 weeks pregnant to get an abortion.
