NEW YORK, November 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Following the legalization of same-sex “marriage” in New York in June, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan has issued an official statement banning the use of Roman Catholic churches, facilities or properties for homosexual “marriage” ceremonies. Read more…
Given the expressed intent of the Founding Fathers in establishing a free, just and virtuous society, the importance of morality as its foundation, and their recourse to God from the beginning through recent history…it’s remarkable that we are in this battle now. Read more…
from Rome Reports
If your marriage were a sport, which one would it be and why? It may seem like an odd question, but it definitely leads to interesting answers. In the video above people say:
Oh, what sport? Basketball. Read more…
By: Jim Tonkowich
“Treat yourself,” my friend said. “It will be a shot in the arm for your marriage.” He was encouraging me to read Pius XI’s December 1930 encyclical, Casti Connubii (Chaste Marriage). As it turns out, it’s more than a treat. It’s strong medicine for what ails marriage more than eighty years after it was penned. Read more…
The UN wants young people to change the world. In Madrid the Pope will ask them to change themselves.
Today, a thousand or so youth activists from around the world gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York for a high level meeting on the theme of “dialogue and mutual understanding”. The two-day UN youth summitmarks the culmination of an international Year of Youth that began last August and ends on the annual UN World Youth Day, August 12th. Read more…
Steve Gershom (a pseudonym) is a gay Catholic man in his late twenties. His blog, stevegershom.com, has been around for some months, but he has just decided to make it public. It’s original, funny, poignant — and culturally important. You can also find him on Twitter as stevegershom. I am profoundly grateful to Steve for agreeing to write this post for the Bubble. Read more…
by ARCHBISHOP TIMOTHY DOLAN
Almost two weeks ago — hauntingly, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, whom King Herod would behead because the saint dared to defend the God-given truth about marriage — our state sadly attempted a re-definition of marriage.
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Is there anything left to say?
Yes. Read more…
After one year as president of the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., John Garvey took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to announce a change in his university’s policy for housing students on campus: a return to all-male and all-female residence halls, and the gradual elimination of mixed-sex buildings. According to the Washington Post, Catholic University first changed to “co-ed” housing over two decades ago and currently houses both sexes in eleven of its seventeen residence halls—though men and women remain in separate floors or wings, unlike the latest fashion of shared suites, bathrooms, and even sleeping quarters at some universities. Read more…
The Catholic University of America generated much press last week when its president announced that, beginning next year, it would transition to single-sex only housing. Considering that such a move was previously unheard-of, the attention wasn’t shocking. Read more…
by Jennifer Roback Morse
Part 1 of 2
Dr. Morse gave this speech April 23, 2011, at Hong Kong Baptist University, at a conference of Western and Chinese scholars, entitled “The Family and Sexual Ethics: Christian Foundations and Public Values.” China is experiencing numerous problems due to family breakdown, including the one child policy, high divorce rates, and an imbalanced sex ratio. This conference was convened because many in China, even in the Academy of Science and in government, are interested in what Christianity has to say about marriage, family, sexuality and society. The conference papers will be translated into Chinese and published in book form.
Now that we lost a big one in New York,
I have an idea: let’s all the social conservatives stand around in a circle and criticize each other. NOT! I stumbled over two separate social conservatives criticizing the Catholic Church in New York for not doing enough, here and here. These articles were mostly repeats of a New York Times article, with virtually nothing in the way of original reporting. (Why we should repeat the talking points of our enemies is beyond me.) Others seem to think that if we could just get the arguments right, we might have won. I don’t agree with that assessment, in spite of the fact that I spend a lot of effort trying to craft the best possible arguments.
The very same New York Times article which the critics of the Church Read more…
Critics of the Catholic Church claim that the Church wields authoritarian control over all its members. The Pope and the bishops ruthlessly suppress all dissent, debate or disobedience.
To those who think this way, I have two words: Andrew Cuomo.
Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, lives in the Governor’s Mansion with a woman to whom he is not married. The Catholic Church holds that he is living in a state of mortal sin.
The Catholic Church holds that marriage was instituted by God in the Garden of Eden, and that marriage is the lifelong union of a man and a woman, ordered toward the procreation and education of children and the mutual good of the spouses.
Andrew Cuomo pressured the legislature of New York to change the definition of marriage to the union of any two persons, instituted by His Divine Self in the Garden of Albany, ordered toward no particular purpose at all.
If the Church were the ruthlessly conformist authoritarian institution she is taken to be, you might think someone in authority would have something to say to Andrew Cuomo. He is an excellent candidate to be asked to go elsewhere to meet his spiritual and religious needs, such as they are.
No one in authority has made this rather obvious suggestion to him. Perhaps some ordinary New York Catholics ought to politely ask him to get lost.
By Michelle Laque Johnson
Click here to view a video of Dr. Morse speaking.
People who promote same-sex marriage say the Catholic Church’s stand that marriage is a sacrament that must be between one man and one woman is gay-bashing. Why, they ask, should it matter to you if two people of the same sex get married? Love is love, right? Read more…
For those of our readers in the Kansas/Missouri area:
MARRIAGE AND CATHOLIC HEALTHCARE. This summer’s “Catholic Healthcare Identity: Medical and Pastoral Strategies” conference at Benedictine College is the NFP Outreach National Summer Institute. The conference, lasting from July 11-16, offers college credit for educators and/or continuing medical education credits for doctors and continuing education units for nurses. Keynote speakers include:
I received this in an email. If you are nearby, go hear him speak.
With this Ring: Marriage will Save Humanity, but We Must First Save Marriage
• Why are young people having such difficulty understanding marriage?
• Why are an increasing number saying marriage is obsolete?
• Why are fewer and fewer young adults marrying?
• Why are over 40% of children being born to unmarried mothers? Read more…
It takes an open and intelligent mind that always seeks truth, willing to go wherever that leads. Becoming a parent also helps.
One of the things I love about this book I’ve been reading, The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God, is its high-level of reasoning and engagement of critical thinking. I wasn’t exactly prepared for that when starting what I already knew was a touching biography about an exceptional life, the one Michael Pakaluk wrote about his wife Ruth after she died. Read more…
Note from Dr. Morse, who is a contributor to this volume,: “Erica’s personal journey is precisely the story we are looking for at the Ruth Institute: people who have learned from experience that the sexual revolution is a lie. ‘The divorce at 12 was the hardest one.’ That is just an awful, and very telling statement.”
Note from Betsy: Here’s a quote from the article about Dr. Morse: “I knew Jennifer Roback Morse’s work and thought having an economist write on marriage was a good idea. She is well-respected, and her credentials are outstanding.”
by Judy Roberts
The popular media view of the Catholic Church as anti-woman gets a vigorous challenge in a new book edited by Erika Bachiochi. In Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching (Pauline Books & Media), Bachiochi and eight other contributors expound upon the Church’s teaching on sex, contraception, marriage, abortion and priestly ordination from a pro-woman perspective. Bachiochi, a 35-year-old mother of five, lives in East Walpole, Mass., with her husband, Dan. She spoke to Register correspondent Judy Roberts. Read more…
I have a personal interest in this parish, St. John Vianney, as it is the church my husband grew up in.
HACIENDA HEIGHTS (KTLA) — Services will continue in a parish hall after an intentional fire caused an estimated $8 million in damages at the Saint John Vianney Catholic Church overnight Saturday.
“The extensive structure fire at St. John Vianney Church in Hacienda Heights has been confirmed as an act of arson,” Sheriff’s Department officials said Saturday night.
The blaze started just after midnight, authorities said.
An estimated $8 million in damages was sustained.
Two priests and a seminarian were reportedly inside a rectory located next to the church at the time of the incident….
I have read many news articles today, and watched many TV news reports. Although they all call it arson, not a single one has mentioned the phrase “hate crime”. No reporter has speculated, “It is not known whether this might have been a hate crime.” No public official has said, “We are investigating this as a possible hate crime.”
My cynical side thinks that if this was a synagogue, anti-Semitism would immediately be suspected. If this was a mosque, it would probably be national news. But since it’s just a church, it’s just arson.
It seems the editors of Mississauga News Magazine are utterly incensed that the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board near Ontario, Canada would not allow a student to form an official Gay/Striaght Alliance club at one of their secondary schools:
The nerve! This is a human rights issue and the Catholic board is coming out — excuse the term — on the wrong side of the argument.
Yeah, yeah… How dare those bigoted, homophobic, hate-mongering Christians manage their own schools according to their own religious precepts?
The editors of the Mississauga News are not the only self-appointed culture police to swing into action:
from LifeSiteNews.com:
In response, NDP [New Democratic Party] education critic Rosario Marchese called on Premier Dalton McGuinty to force GSAs into the Catholic boards, and the homosexual lobby group Egale denounced the board and the authentically-Catholic group Courage in a March 22 open letter to the Ontario government.
Well then, how about this? What if that same Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board were to show that they are not ‘anti-gay’ in some other way?:
from LifeSiteNews.com:
At an equity conference next month, Ontario’s Dufferin-Peel Catholic school board will feature several homosexual activists including one gay magazine reporter who covered the 2010 Toronto Pride Parade, with video showing him gleefully interviewing various Pride participants, including men dressed in sado-masochistic thongs. Read more…
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