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| There are 8077 News Items in 674 pages and you are on page number 28 |
| Vigil parishes being taxed as if 'closed' - Monday, May 31, 2010 5-31-10 Nine cities and towns have forced the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to pay property taxes on closed churches, schools, convents, and parish halls, contending that the buildings no longer qualify as tax-exempt because the archdiocese is not using them. Two of the taxed churches — St. Frances X. Cabrini in Scituate and St. Jeremiah in Framingham — have been occupied for years by former parishioners protesting their closure. But local assessors insist the church buildings are now taxable because the vigils are not sanctioned by the archdiocese. (full story) |
| Hard times for men of the cloth - Monday, May 31, 2010 5-30-10 The Rev. Robert Rien, pastor of St. Ignatius Church of Antioch, laments the fallout he and colleagues have endured: "It's been a source of embarrassment for those of us who were not involved. It is an experience of guilt by association, not so much by Catholics as non-Catholics." The wonder, judging by the four East Bay [Calif.] parishes we surveyed, is that Mass attendance remains steady and the collection basket still gets filled. Catholics have gritted their teeth and marched on, which is not to say they are at peace with what happened. (full story) |
| 'The first passion must be for the truth' - Sunday, May 30, 2010 5-28-10 So in our church now, from our leadership, every bishop throughout the whole church -- priests, religious, all of us who are the disciples of Jesus -- must be willing to have this passion for truth, bring out the truth, what has happened, and then we must demand change, accountability. Pope Benedict himself has recently said, "Yes, forgiveness must be forthcoming, but that does not preclude justice." Those who perpetrated this sin within our church, those who abused, those who facilitated that abuse, those who covered up that abuse, those who moved perpetrators from one place to another, must be held accountable. That's the kind of reform that has to happen in our church. (full story) |
| Canadian church still fighting claims - Sunday, May 30, 2010 5-30-10 Rev. James Kneale, the St. Catharines-area priest, was convicted of sexually abusing the former altar boy 11 years ago. Caruso and his Fort Erie family sued Kneale, the Diocese of St. Catharines and former bishops for $8.6 million. Kneale and the diocese countersued Caruso’s mother and father. They claimed the parents were negligent in failing to get counselling and medical help for their teenaged son and that Caruso’s father regularly beat him, compounding his psychological troubles. The legal hardball shattered the once-devout family. Caruso’s parents had to hire their own lawyers. Family relationships were strained. Caruso attempted suicide several times. And it got worse: His mother Claire died March 22, 2009, while the legal war still raged — a full decade after Kneale’s conviction, and 25 years after the priest performed a sex act on him during a rectory sleepover. (full story) |
| 70-plus cases in just one town - Saturday, May 29, 2010 5-28-10 “This is just Jamaica Plain. This is unbelievable,” Garabedian said. “I do this [work] every day and I’m so close to it, but having a local newspaper like yours say there were 70 cases in your neighborhood—it’s just unbelievable.” The 70 cases, which span 27 years from the 1950s to 1980s, include abuse victims from four out of five JP parishes and the former Nazareth Child Care Center on Moss Hill. The infamous child-raping priest John Geoghan alone is responsible for 59 of those cases during his time at St. Andrew the Apostle in Forest Hills. Geoghan became the face of the Boston Archdiocese’s cover-up of clergy sexual abuse, in part because of the activism of JP survivors’ families. (full story) |
| Sipe argues for Pope's resignation - Saturday, May 29, 2010 Following is the the text of a talk given by Richard Sipe to a group of guests invited by Bishop-Accountability.org in the Boston Public Library on May 20, 2010. It is a powerful and provocative commentary setting out the case why the gravity of the present crisis facing the Church calls for Benedict XVI to be the 10th Roman Pontiff in history to resign. (full story) |
| Layman appointed to Vatican supreme court - Saturday, May 29, 2010 5-29-10 Edward N. Peters, who has held the Edmund Cardinal Szoka chair in faculty development at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit since 2005, has been appointed to serve as a consultant to the church's highest court, the Apostolic Signature. That's the Vatican court headed up by Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke. (full story) |
| Vatican's abuse prosecutor: "church must amputate" - Saturday, May 29, 2010 5-29-10 Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna indirectly critiqued the clerical culture in which abuser priests were routinely given second chances.“How many sins in the church [have happened] because of arrogance, insatiable ambition, abuse of power and injustices committed by those who abuse their ministry to advance their career?”, Scicluna asked. He denounced the “futile and wretched motives of vainglory.” The remedy to such scandals offered by God as the “Divine Surgeon,” according to Scicluna, is to “cut out [disease] in order to heal,” and to “amputate in order to restore health.” (full story) |
| NOW president calls for reform - Friday, May 28, 2010 5-27-10 National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill said, "State laws must clearly define the role of a priest or pastor as one involving a 'fiduciary duty' between a licensed caregiver and a client -- like those accorded psychiatrists or physicians. Sexual relations in those instances should be grounds for appropriate civil as well as criminal sanctions." (full story) |
| Priests' girlfriends ask for end of celibacy law - Friday, May 28, 2010 5-28-10 A group of 40 Italian women have written to Pope Benedict XVI begging him to repeal the Catholic church's celibacy rules - so they can have normal relationships with priests. The women, most of whom have refused to give their names, have all had, or are having, affairs with members of the clergy and are fed up with having to keep their feelings under wraps. (full story) |
| An overview of changes in the new missal - Friday, May 28, 2010 5-25-10 The Vatican has formally approved a new English translation of the Roman Missal -- a translation that will change some of the words with which Roman Catholics have worshiped throughout the English-speaking world for the past 40 years -- the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced April 30. (full story) |
| Report on abuse at German Jesuit schools - Friday, May 28, 2010 5-27-10 A special investigator released a report on Thursday saying that 205 former students claimed they had been abused in Jesuit schools, including at the prestigious Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin. The investigator, Ursula Raue, said the actual number could be higher. “We cannot expect to have heard everything yet,” she said. “The question must be asked why the order dealt so dismissively with the well-based information about frequent incidents of sexual abuse in its institutions.” (full story) |
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