The answers to three key Catholic questions speak volumes

Once again let me stress that I developed this set of questions in the mid-1980s as a journalistic tool. The goal, when asking these questions, is to listen carefully to the answers.

It is especially interesting, of course, to note when people remain silence or try to find a way to maneuver around the questions without answering.

Different types of believers, of course, have different answers. The goal is to listen carefully and then respond with follow-up questions that yield nuggets of on-the-record doctrinal, as opposed to political, information. The goal is to transcend mere labels.

Here are those questions, once again:

(1) Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

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Father Andrew Greeley, novelist and Catholic critic, dead at age 85

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Father Andrew M. Greeley, an outspoken Roman Catholic priest who wrote more than 50 novels and publicly feuded with his superior John Cardinal Cody, died at the age of 85 in his Chicago home, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

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Fr. Andrew Greeley and Brutal Chicago Church Politics

Queer preaching

The first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, made controversial remarks on ABC Australia’s popular “Q&A” show on Monday, noting that Jesus lived an “alternative lifestyle” while highlighting how Jesus spent time with male disciples and that he loved them.

“Jesus had a very kind of alternative lifestyle,” Robinson said, hinting at a possible sexual orientation for the Savior of the world.

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Cardinal Dolan can’t just laugh this one off.

Cardinal Dolan Has Taught Us A Few Important Things In The Last Few Weeks. In the last few weeks Cardinal Dolan, through his spokesman Joseph Zwilling, has been doing a lot of teaching by word and deed.

His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, has let the Church know pro-abortion New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is a Catholic in good standing.

The world has also found out the Archdiocese of New York is paying for abortions and contraception for thousands of its employees.

The Cardinals spokesman has rather heartlessly described the abortions and contraception the Archdiocese provides as “services” and excused the Archdiocese paying the bills for these “services” because they write the checks “under protest.”

We have many lessons we can learn from these situations.

Editor’s note: Someone better take a close look at what’s going on in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and other similar sized urban areas. This church scandal is just beginning to break!

John Jay report deliberately ignored widespread homosexual activity of priest abusers

On May 18, researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice released their long-awaited final report, “Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.”

The research team, led by Karen Terry, Ph.D., gathered an impressive amount of information from which they drew a number of conclusions; the most unsettling of which is the claim that homosexuality is unrelated to the abuse (particularly of adolescent males, the primary victims in the crisis.)

Though 81 percent of the victims were post-pubescent males, researchers downplayed the homosexual connection by suggesting that this simply reflects the fact that offenders had greater access to boys. The report also proposes the possibility that, “Although the victims of priests were most often male, thus defining the acts as homosexual, the priest did not at any time recognize his identity as homosexual.”

A less politically correct conclusion, it would seem, is to acknowledge that the offending clerics were perhaps unwilling to take “ownership” of their struggle with homosexuality. In any event, this line of argument appears to be little more than a red herring.

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Their birthdays – and their lives – were most cruelly and brutally stolen

The Pro-Life Action League, along with Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and Priests for Life has announced the “National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children” to take place on Saturday, September 14, 2013. It is meant to honor the unborn at the grave sites where they are buried.

Eric Scheidler, Executive Director of the Pro-life Action League, stated, “It’s sobering to realize that grave markers for the unborn victims of abortion list only a date of burial. They have no birthdays because they were never allowed to be born. We can list no date of death, because those who killed them discarded their bodies like garbage. But they are not garbage to us. They are our brothers and sisters. That’s why we buried them, and that’s why we visit their graves to mourn for them and testify to their humanity.”

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Yes … but will the bishops mess things up again?

Speaking on a five-city tour through northern California, the three-time Boston mayor and well-known author, said Catholics feel disenfranchised and think powerful secular groups wield too much power and influence in American politics, reports the Catholic Business Journal.

“It is only a matter of time before Catholic voters say they have had enough of dysfunctional and unrepresentative government,” he said, adding, “and divisive politics.”

Flynn continued, “[We need] lay Catholic leaders committed to expressing this Catholic voice to emerge, and to unite this divided country.”

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Editor’s note: Mr. Flynn neglected to mention the nearly 50/50 split between liberal and conservative Catholics in the United States – or what he planned to do to resolve that issue. A miracle, perhaps?