Protecting the innocent “is a proper consideration” in the government regulation of firearms, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case over whether the government can prohibit a person with a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm.
A Chicago bishop has been tapped to lead the U.S. bishops’ ongoing efforts to combat racism. Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago has been named chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism.
An advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on May 10 to recommend that a birth control pill be sold in the U.S. without a doctor’s prescription.
The Catholic Church in the U.S. has made progress over the past two decades in confronting sexual abuse against minors within the church, but has only begun to address the vulnerability of adults to sexual abuse by clergy, religious and lay leaders, experts told OSV News.
The U.S. Supreme Court said it would extend the administrative stay in the abortion pill dispute until April 21, temporarily keeping in place status quo federal regulations regarding the use of an abortion drug, and giving the court additional time to consider a lower court’s ruling to stay the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug.
The U.S. bishops are calling on Catholics to contact their representatives and senators in Congress and urge them to vote for a bill that would protect women and girls’ opportunities in sports by requiring federally funded female sports programs “to be reserved for biological females.”
At least four people were killed and eight injured in a shooting at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville, Ky., on April 10, local police said. The gunman was also killed. That incident followed another mass shooting where six people, including three children, were killed at a Nashville school two weeks earlier on March 27.
Several U.S. bishops are extending greetings to the Jewish community as its members celebrate Passover (Pesach), which commemorates the divine liberation of the ancient Israelites from enslavement in Egypt as recounted in the book of Exodus.
Indigenous Catholics, along with U.S. and Canadian bishops, are welcoming the Vatican’s repudiation of a legal and political doctrine by which European colonial powers and North American governments historically seized lands from Indigenous peoples — while stressing there is more work to be done in healing Catholic-Indigenous relations.
Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville, a former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, was installed March 29 as the fifth bishop of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana.
