Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life.
Newark Archbishop John J. Myers got back from his trip to Poland this week and, according to his spokesman, will shortly make his first public statement on the latest revelations about Michael Fugee, the molester-priest who, in contravention of a court order, was permitted to minister to minors at two New Jersey parishes.
Phil Lawler, the redoubtable conservative Catholic commentator, has come to the conclusion that Pope Francis is a simple pastor.
Today is Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks — one of the three big holidays, hagim, when Jews journeyed to Jerusalem to make a sacrifice at the Temple. It was in the first instance an agricultural festival, marked out by biblical injunction as 50 days from the barley harvest at Passover to the wheat harvest.
In St. Paul yesterday, a vote in the State Senate assured that Minnesota will become the 12th state in the Union to legalize same-sex marriage. As has happened in other states where SSM has been approved by legislative action, virtually all the Democrats voted in the affirmative, all the Republican in the negative.
It is not surprising that Cardinal Sean O’Malley should decide to skip this year’s commencement at Boston College, at which the archbishop of Boston customarily gives the benediction.
Among the institutions of higher learning that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would like to provide with state funding are the Princeton Theological Seminary, a school dedicated to training Presbyterian clergy, and the Beth Medrash Govoha, one of the largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) yeshivas in the world.
Why, exactly, is it so difficult to find a burial place for Tamerlan Tsarnaev?
What are they thinking over at archdiocesan headquarters in Newark?
With Rhode Island’s legalization of same-sex marriage yesterday, New England becomes the first region in the country to go all in for SSM. Rhode Island is the most Catholic state in the Union, and New England the most Catholic region. Given the Church’s staunch opposition to SSM, an explanation would seem to be in order.
After going to the mat to defend Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn, who was convicted of failing to report a suspected abusive priest, Catholic League president Bill Donohue has now taken up cudgels on behalf of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, who is under scrutiny for violating a court order restricting a priest’s access to minors.
