Catholic Church

By Dominic Legge, O.P., First Things - It is time for clergy and laity to begin a movement for the purification of the Church. The shameful sexual sins and crimes of clergy—including cardinals, bishops, and priests—can no longer be tolerated. Tolerance is precisely what has allowed these problems to multiply for decades and persist up to today... As Fr. Thomas Berg recently explained, the issue is sexually active priests and bishops. In the main, the persistent problem is with homosexually active priests. 

By Msgr. Charles Pope - I like many of you am grieving these days. I will not speak directly to it here, but I think you know why I am grieving. I don’t do grief well. But I have learned to study it in others and thus find my way... My father died more than 10 years ago, and except for essential papers related to his estate, I simply boxed up most of his papers and stored them in the attic of my rectory for future attention. At long last I am sorting through those boxes. Among his effects were also many papers of my mother’s, who died about two years before he passed away.

By Fr. Joseph M. Esper, Catholic Exchange - St. Paul writes, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”109 (109 1 Cor. 13:11)  His example of growing and developing as a person applies here: quite possibly the reason our previously satisfying experiences of prayer no longer appeal to us is that the Lord is calling us to a more mature faith, one requiring a deeper foundation.

CNA/EWTN News - The Holy See on Thursday denounced sexual abuse and called for accountability for both perpetrators and leaders who covered up their crimes, following the release of a report detailing alleged clerical abuse in Pennsylvania... “The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible,” said the statement, released Aug. 16... “Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur.”