On June 11, the online magazine Slate ran a piece by William Saletan on virginity restoration. Saletan’s piece followed articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times about Muslim women in France who have lost their virginity and have elected to have their hymens surgically reattached; Muslim men expect their brides to be virgins and do not look kindly [...]
In the beginning of June, we noticed that any mention of Sen. Barack Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council was gone. We searched the Internet to see if there were any signs that the Council was still active. The best we could find was Beliefnet’s report that it had spoken to one of the Council’s members, an [...]
In recent years there had been a prayer service for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Catholics at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis prior to the Twin Cities Pride Celebration. But not this year. The prayer service, scheduled for June 25, was instead a “peace” service; there was no mention of rights for the LGBT [...]
On June 18, Pope Benedict XVI welcomed a group of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Arranged by the Pave the Way Foundation, the group personally thanked the pope for the Catholic Church’s intervention in saving their lives in Italy during World War II. During their audience, the group also announced that they would be arranging a symposium in [...]
At the end of May, Pastor John Hagee pulled his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain; McCain subsequently renounced Hagee’s endorsement. This came a week after Pastor John Hagee met with Bill Donohue at the Catholic League headquarters in New York, ending their dispute. After Pastor Hagee withdrew his endorsement of McCain, we said that [...]
Two evangelical leaders, Rev. Jim Wallis and Rev. Tony Campolo, have pledged to reach out to Catholics and evangelicals by pushing the Democratic Party to change its Party Platform on abortion. Wallis told ABC News that “Abortion reduction should be a central Democratic Party plank in this election.” But he also stressed that no legal restrictions [...]
n November, Floridians are slated to vote on two amendments to their state’s constitution that would, if approved, allow for school vouchers. But on June 13, an array of groups filed suit asking the Second Circuit to block the vote. Following the suit we noted that if the Second Circuit answered the calls of these groups, [...]
It’s not unusual for colleges to become a breeding ground for anti-Catholicism. Recently, New York’s Cooper Union and the University of South Carolina-Sumter proved themselves no exceptions. These two schools, the beneficiaries of federal tax monies, awarded their students, under the guise of free speech, a platform to spout off their anti-Catholic vitriol. From May 27 [...]
In June, Lewis Black, a repeat Catholic offender, released his new book, Me of Little Faith. In the book, Black holds no punches when it comes to attacking the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jews and Mormonism. But when it comes to Islam, Black gives the religion a pass. Black’s chapter on Islam, titled “Islam. All I’m Saying Is, [...]
On June 13, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops struck a blow to the culture of death by reaffirming its rejection of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. It was important for all Catholics to acknowledge that the first and most important issues affecting public policy are the life issues. To maintain that other [...]
