Roman Catholics: The Unlikely Cardinal

From the pulpit where he stood one day last week, Richard James Cardinal Cushing, 68, looked down not at the familiar Irish faces of his own Boston congregation but rather into the docile and questioning gaze of brown Peruvian eyes. The occasion was the blessing of a new brick-and-concrete Roman Catholic church in a slum suburb of Lima.

Share

Seth Walsh, Gay Boy Bullied into Suicide, Remembered

Eleven-year-old Shawn Walsh paid a poignant tribute to the brother, just two years older, he had lost. Gripping a microphone as he stood at the altar of the First Baptist Church in Tehachapi, Calif., Shawn joshed that his brother could be “a pain in the butt” at times but that Seth was “the best big brother in the world — no, the galaxy.” Wearing a yellow

Share

Religion: Council of Renewal

A fortnight hence in the Vatican, 2,600 bishops of the Roman Catholic Church will meet in a gathering so rare that only 20 others like it have been convened in the 20 centuries of Christian history. The purpose of the Second Vatican Council is what His Holiness Pope John XXIII, who has the Catholic prelate's traditional wariness of words that suggest drastic change, calls an aggiornamento—a modernization.

Share

Catholic Church Fights Gay Marriage, Activists Regroup

When America’s Catholic bishops gather next week in Baltimore for a four-day conference, they will hear an update on the Catholic Church’s ongoing fight to convince the country that marriage as an institution should never include gay couples, and they’ll get a sneak peek at how that fight will be waged in the coming year. Videos aimed at priests and deacons are being produced in English and Spanish to give the pastors better tools to reach their parishioners, especially young people, whom the church fears need reminding about its basic teachings on marriage, love and sex.

Share