WASHINGTON — Catholic leaders have joined the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to protest new rules that mandate contraceptive services for employee health insurance. And they are seeking to avoid an impasse that could force a drastic resolution. 

The USCCB has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to broaden the rule’s religious exemption, characterizing it as too “narrow.” HHS has not signaled whether it will review the exemption; it has provided a 60-day period to register comments.

The definition of what constitutes a religious organization that could be exempted from the coverage requirements is a main cause of concern for Church leaders.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo,...READ MORE

JERUSALEM — In 2003, Margo Tarazi from East Jerusalem couldn’t make a living, so she decided to move to Holland, her mother’s birthplace.

“I worked at my family’s incoming travel agency until 2002, but there wasn’t any work because of the second intifada,” Tarazi, now 35, said recently. She was referring to the Palestinian uprising that brought tourism to the Holy Land almost to a standstill. “Then I spent a year and a half working for an NGO [non-governmental organization], but I didn’t like it,” she said.

Eager to start a life away from Israeli military checkpoints and Palestinian suicide bombers, Tarazi utilized her Dutch passport. Then, her maternal grandmother, the person she had...READ MORE

WASHINGTON (EWTN News) —Two leading Catholic bishops have asked their fellow bishops to encourage pastors and parishioners to support Catholic Relief Services’ emergency-relief efforts in the Horn of Africa, suggesting that churches hold a second collection to address the need.

“Every day we are seeing more and more heartbreaking news about the drought and famine in Somalia and the eastern parts of Africa. We see millions of people being forced from their homes, leaving behind what meager possessions they had, and walking for days over rough terrain,” Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., wrote.

Archbishop Dolan heads the U.S. Conference of...READ MORE

For Christopher Dawson is More Like a Movement than a Man - Carl Olson, Ignatius Insight Scoop

Protect the Poor, Not Poverty Programs - John Couretas, Acton Institute/Acton Commentary

Myth Busters: Catholics Worship Mary - Brent Stubbs, Almost Not Catholic

Contraception & Healthcare Rights - Christopher O. Tollefsen, Public Discourse

Pundits want Pope to Change His “Policies”, How to Explain He Can’t? - William Oddie, Catholic Herald

Eclectic Convert: Julie Nicholson - Why I’m Catholic

Pope Benedict XVI Rebuts Criticism of World Youth Day - Patrick Madrid

Cardinal Pell on ‘Authentic Catholicism vs Cafeteria Catholicism’ - Lux Occulta

Cardinal Pell: A Good Old-Fashioned Irish...READ MORE

It’s “American Saints Week” at the Register.

We’ve been looking at updates in the cases of several American men and women whose causes for beatification have been ongoing. Yesterday, we spoke about a new cause, that of Father Aloysius Ellacuria. Today, we look at another cause that was just introduced this year.

Father Joseph Muzquiz

Although devoted to his Basque heritage, Father Ellacuria became an American citizen, as did Father Joseph Muzquiz, who worked and died in the Boston Archdiocese.

Father Muzquiz was one of the first three priests ordained for Opus Dei and the first Opus Dei priest to come to the United States. He arrived in 1949 to establish Opus Dei at the request of...READ MORE

Patricia Neal, who died a year ago this August, was one of the 20th century’s most gifted actresses of stage and screen. But soaring achievement was met with heart-rending tragedy, including three strokes that nearly ended her life at age 39.

Through it all — in a plan that only God could have written — she secured her greatest achievement of all: a surpassing quality of love, guided, after she hit rock bottom, by the richness of Catholicism.

It was a most unexpected development, making her remarkable life even more so.

Patricia Neal — christened “Patsy Louise” — was born on Jan. 20, 1926, in the small town of Packard, Ky., a close-knit community in the heart of coal country, where...READ MORE

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (EWTN News/CNA) — We need to make time for silence in our lives if we are to pray and listen to God, said Pope Benedict XVI in his weekly general audience on Aug. 10.

“Silence is the environment that best promotes recollection, listening to God, meditation,” he told pilgrims gathered at his summer residence in the hilltop town of Castel Gandolfo, 15 miles south of Rome.

“The very fact that a taste of silence leaves us, so to speak, to ‘fill’ the silence predisposes us to prayer.”

It is for this reason, noted the Pope, that monks and nuns have traditionally established their communities “in particularly beautiful places, in the countryside, in hills, in...READ MORE

Things Not Said By St. Lawrence - LarryD, Acts of the Apostasy

Mother Bernardine Goulter Survived the Atomic Bomb at Nagasaki - Catholic Herald

On Human Power & Temporal Authority - Fr. Robert John Araujo SJ, Mirror of Justice

Movie Review: Marty, The Quest for Beauty - Allison Salerno, Ilsussidiario

What is the Purpose of Government? - Dr. Jeff Mirus, CatholicCulture.org

How to Organize Successful Pilgrimage! - Richard Collins, Linen on the Hedgerow

Secular Recognition for the Word “Chalice” - Fr. Tim Finigan, The Hermeneutic of Continuity

The Departure of an Order - Mike St. Thomas, First Things/On the Square

Dirty Habits - Sister Marie Morgan CSF, The Integrated Catholic Life™

...READ MORE