The number of seminarians worldwide has grown 73 percent during the pontificate of John Paul II. In 1978, there were 64,000 seminarians compared to more than 110,500 in 2000.
"The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: the Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed" was first published in New York in 1836 and its aim is, as its title proclaims, to cast discredit on the Catholic Church and Catholics generally.
Anti-Catholic newspapers were flourishing in the United States by the mid-1830s thanks to the wide appeal of a new genre: convent horror stories.
It is my experience, as a lawyer, that many people are threatened in schools. Many feel that their beliefs and convictions are under attack from within the very bodies that currently hold sway within the schools themselves.
This past November, in an interview with a leading Italian daily, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, said that he would not exclude the possibility of the Holy See becoming a full member of the United Nations, where it presently is a permanent observer.
I would get angry looking at bumper stickers on people's cars! I would get angry at the way the whole debate was being twisted in the media so that if you were antiabortion you were anti-woman.
A few years ago, seemingly out of the blue, in the midst of a long e-mail message on other matters, a professional friend evoked her sadness at having had an abortion when she was in her twenties.
A new authentically Jewish history of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust needs to be written in order to help bring some long-overdue recognition to this "righteous gentile," a man whose legacy is as one of the century's great friends of the Jewish people.
Recently I heard that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has opposed a legislative proposal that would require priests to report cases of suspected child abuse said in the confessional. Apparently, he said that he would even tell the priests to disobey the law and that he would even go to jail if need be. I am surprised how many of my Catholic friends are critical of Cardinal McCarrick. Isn't what is said in confession sacred and cannot be revealed by the priest?
