Pesky media, always getting so bothered about the sexual abuse of children.
Yes, yes, writes New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan: abuse is VERY BAD. But couldn’t the media just give the church a break already?
Friday’s headline, only the most recent, stings us again: “Doctor Asserts Church Ignored Abuse Warnings,” as the psychiatrist Read More
The remarkable thing about Mitt Romney’s speech yesterday, an aspect that was overlooked in much of the (mostly positive) coverage of it, is that it went well beyond the Kennedy-esque assertion of independence from church influence and the sentiment that churches should likewise be free from government pressure.
Three keen religious observers I talked to Read More
Yesterday’s unusual reply by Cardinal Edward Egan to a critical and anonymous letter about him circulating in New York’s archdiocese would have once sent major ripples across the city’s political landscape. That it hasn’t is a measure of the diminished influence of the Catholic hierarchy in public life here, a fact that critics of Read More
In reading Dershowitz’s rebuttal to Mearsheimer and Walt, I noticed something else he said:
“It is rightfully considered vile to suggest that American Catholic politicians such as John F. Kennedy and John Kerry owe their primary allegiance to the Vatican over the United States.”Dershowitz is saying, Don’t you dare bring up Jewishness in Read More
As tourists packed the pews, Cardinal Edward Michael Egan stood under the vaulted ceiling of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday morning, celebrating Mass in his thick Illinois accent.
The cardinal’s Sunday mass used to be a press event when Cardinal John O’Connor was Archbishop of New York. New Yorkers never knew what the press-friendly O’Connor Read More
When New York’s Al Smith, the first Catholic Presidential candidate in the nation’s history, lost the 1928 election, comedians said that Smith sent a one-word telegram to the Pope: “Unpack.”
With the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the 265th Bishop of Rome, one New York priest joked that he’d sent a similar message to Read More
If they watched the overnight vigil in Saint Peter’s Square as the Pope lay dying, the good doctors of the Netherlands must have shaken their heads in bewilderment. “Watson, the needle,” Sherlock Holmes implored to another medicine man of dubious ethics. The Dutch doctors, pioneers in the coming age of euthanasia, surely were thinking the Read More
Old editions of the Yale Songbook included a German drinking song called “The Pope.” This was its first stanza: “The Pope, he leads a jolly life / He’s free from every care and strife. / He drinks the best of Rhenish wine, / I wish the Pope’s gay life were mine.”
But the next stanza Read More
Abraham H. Foxman sat in his office suite with its expensive United Nations view, wondering when the WNBC camera crew would get there. The afternoon would soon be spent: It was Friday, and the national director of the Anti-Defamation League was ending phone calls with the words “Shabbat Shalom.” The next day he was jetting Read More
Boy, you go to the beach for a few days in August and while you’re there, news happens, the lights go out and the Mets put together a winning streak. We have some catching up to do:
· The Vatican says it will intercede with Catholic politicians around the world in hopes that they will Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
