Catholic Church

By Tom Hoopes, Aleteia - Researchers have found a “big surprise” in world demographics data... Over that time period, the world average of 4.7 children per woman has dropped to 2.4 in 2017... But if you look at it country by country you see a wide disparity... Countries with the fewest children include Poland, South Korea, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Japan. In Taiwan, women average only 1 child. The most fertile countries include several in Africa, as well as Afghanistan, with an average 4-7 children per family.

By JD Flynn, Catholic Herald, CNA - On Aug. 16, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo made U.S. Catholics a promise… The cardinal, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, wrote that a summer of scandal had revealed a spiritual crisis in the Church, through which “scores of beloved children of God were abandoned to face an abuse of power alone….This is a moral catastrophe,” he wrote, while acknowledging that “one root cause is the failure of episcopal leadership.”.. “We firmly resolve,” he wrote, “with the help of God’s grace, never to repeat it.”

By Jonah McKeown, Catholic News Agency - This meeting will discuss a crisis of sexual abuse in the Church, centered around questions about how Archbishop Theodore McCarrick was able to perpetrate decades of sexual abuse against seminarians and young priests while operating at the highest levels of the Church in the United States... There are plans to discuss a “Code of Conduct” for all bishops, along with a third-party system for receiving and investigating sexual abuse complaints against bishops.

By Cathy G. Knipper, Catholic Stand - Most Catholics think first of vocation as a state in life: single, married, priest or religious—or in what one does for a profession: teacher, chef, construction worker. But vocation, as the authors put forth, is who we are—the intrinsic part of our being that is called into a unique life with Christ... “A vocation that is rooted in who we are rather than what we do allows us to find meaning in the midst of every circumstance of life,” writes Burgis.