The House passed the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, also referred to as the American Rescue Plan of 2021, early Saturday morning, Feb. 27. While the bill will fund vaccines, testing and tracing, and will also provide economic relief to American families and adult dependents, it doesn’t include prohibitions on abortion funding.
The Catholic bishops of Texas said Feb. 20 that the generosity of their fellow Texans reaching out to help their neighbors, even while they are also managing their own needs during a historic winter storm, “is truly edifying.”
Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth wants people to consider three questions regarding the use of social media: does this need to be said? Is it my place to say it? And am I saying this in a way that builds up or tears down?
There have been enough earthquakes in Puerto Rico over the past year and a half that the sensation has stuck with Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of San Juan. Sometimes, González said, he thinks the earth is shaking even when it’s not.
While new U.S. President Joe Biden is still reviewing immigration directives from his predecessor, policy watchers expect a more immigrant-friendly path forward as well as help for some families adversely affected by Trump administration policies. But that path forward still is not clear.
For Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, the way U.S. bishops should approach President Joe Biden and important issues can in part be answered through a question his mother used to ask: “What would Jesus do?”
The chairmen of two U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committees welcomed recent executive actions by President Joe Biden to address racial equity in housing and the use of private prisons by the federal government.
The head of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities called President Joe Biden’s stance on abortion “religiously and ethically incoherent” during his homily at the opening Mass of the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life Jan. 28.
Just after 1 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 29, Thomas Hackett stood in the middle of about 50 people crowded on a Washington D.C. street corner. With his eyes closed and fist clenched around wooden rosary beads, he led the group through a series of Hail Mary prayers.
President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging executive order to extend existing federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people exceeds the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2020 ruling on the issue in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, said the chairmen of five U.S. bishops’ committees. However, Biden’s order on “‘sex’ discrimination exceeds the court’s decision,” they said.
