News

By George Weigel, Denver Catholic - Dachau was, for years, the “world’s largest rectory” or “the world’s largest monastery,” for it was there that the Thousand Year Reich consigned more than 2,500 Catholic priests… That these men managed to maintain forms of sacramental life — celebrating clandestine Masses, distributing holy communion surreptitiously and hearing confessions — while nursing and otherwise comforting prisoners being worked and starved to death is a story that should be told time and again in every seminary in the world.

By Courtney Grogan, CNA - An Iraqi church damaged and defaced by the Islamic State in 2014 was rededicated Thursday for the parish’s celebration of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary… The Syriac Catholic Church of Mar Behnam and Mart Sarah in the Iraqi city of Qaraqosh welcomed Archbishop Petros Mouche of Mosul, priests, and the local Catholic community to celebrate the solemnity… Archbishop Mouche rededicated the church's altar, which had been burned by the Islamic State. After renonvations and rebuilding, the interior of the church, once charred black by fire, has been painted white.

By Msgr. Charles Pope, National Catholic Register - The bishops, at least collectively, do not seem to be overly concerned by the rampant unbelief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has obviously been somewhat preoccupied recently with the sexual-abuse scandal, but even before that, they seemed more focused on social-justice issues such as immigration, human trafficking and health care. None of these are unimportant, but far less attention is paid to the declining numbers in the pews, open dissent from Church teaching, and confusion about even the most fundamental truths of the faith.