Archbishop Refutes Accusation of ‘Backsliding’

USA TODAY, Feb. 15 —  After convicted sex abuser Paul Shanley, a former priest, was sentenced in Boston, USA Today criticized the bishops’ management of child protection.

“Justice in court won’t buy what victims of abuse and other frustrated parishioners are seeking from the Church: accountability, transparency and a genuine spirit of change,” the national daily opined. The church’s reform efforts, it said, have “faded.”

Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis responded that Catholics “should be aware and reassured that your bishops are not retreating from the charter adopted in Dallas 30 months ago.” Referencing a statement in the editorial that dioceses found in compliance in 2004 “will be able to self-report next year,” Archbishop Flynn said in a column in his archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Spirit, that after the self-reports are submitted, the auditors “will then verify what has been reported.” 

Anti-Catholicism in Line for an Oscar?

CATHOLIC LEAGUE, Feb. 23 — This year’s Oscar nominations put “a positive spin … on pedophilia, homosexuality, suicide, abortion and communism” and a negative spin on religion, especially Catholicism, William Donohue, head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, charged.

In a news release, Donohue suggested that Hollywood was delivering a double whammy to the Catholic faith in not only snubbing The Passion of the Christ, which was criticized for being anti-Semitic, but in nominating for best short documentary “some little movie like Sister Rose’s Passion.”

 He was referring to the 40-minute documentary on the life of Dominican Sister Rose Thering, whose research on how religion textbooks used in Catholic schools in the early 1960s described the role of the Jews in the Crucifixion led a key figure at the Second Vatican Council to declare that such teachings “must go.”

Another Bitter Pill to Swallow

THE BOSTON HERALD, Feb. 23 — Massachusetts officials are considering a new proposal that would enable women to have prescriptions for birth control pills refilled by trained counselors, according to the Boston Herald. 

Birth control can only be dispensed by doctors, nurses or pharmacists, which, according to Massachusetts Department of Public Health spokeswoman Nicole St. Peter, prohibits women from having prescriptions refilled at family-planning clinics on days when a medical provider isn’t working.

The newspaper said the proposal would benefit low-income women who often don’t have insurance and can’t afford to buy contraception at a pharmacy.

Contending that pharmacists should guide changes in regulation, Public Health Council member Al Sherman said, ``A lot of these pills look alike, and their names sound alike. You need to have the input of someone who is filling 200 of these prescriptions a day. You miss one pill or take the wrong one, and now you have a baby.’’

The article failed to mention that a growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill such prescriptions on moral grounds.