A Mega-Diocese is a diocese so enormous that a bishop cannot oversee it. Remember “bishop” in Greek is επίσκοπος (episcopos) which means “overseer.” Epi means “over” as in the word epidermis. Skopos means “see” as in the English words scope and telescope. What we have created over the last 150 years (since the loss of the Papal States...

A redacted grand jury report on clerical sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s Catholic dioceses was released Tuesday, following an 18-month investigation into thousands of alleged instances of abuse spanning several decades. The report, detailing allegations made in the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton...

The Pennsylvania grand jury report is out: read it here. It examines 70 years of child sex abuse by Catholic priests in six of the state’s eight dioceses, and 70 years of cover-up. Josh Shapiro, the state Attorney General, said in his press conference this afternoon that “over one thousand child victims” were identified in the investigation...

God can work in unexpected ways, so it’s important that all Christians – clergy and lay – are always open to the leading of the Spirit! Fr. Goyo Hidalgo, a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, recently tweeted out a story that exemplifies this fact, a story that took place in a fast food drive-thru, of all places...

If you happen to have a box of spaghetti in your pantry, try this experiment: Pull out a single spaghetti stick and hold it at both ends. Now bend it until it breaks. How many fragments did you make? If the answer is three or more, pull out another stick and try again. Can you break the noodle in two? If not, you're in very good company...

If you’ve ever dipped into the letters of St. Catherine of Siena, you know she is forever encouraging holiness. She wants people inflamed with “blazing charity” and bathing “in the blood of Christ crucified.” She wants to see people be who God made them to be and she wants his Church seeking to be worthy of her identity as the bride of Christ...

We will soon see the Grand Jury report on Pennsylvania. I wonder what it will say about Richard Ginder. In Pittsburgh my wife’s mother was friendly with a politically conservative Catholic writer for Our Sunday Visitor, a Rev. Richard Ginder. My wife remembers that he suddenly stopped coming and was never mentioned again. My wife’s parents...

After a two-year process, an 884-page Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing seven decades of sexual abuse and its cover-up in the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton was released at 2pm Eastern, the end of a court-imposed deadline. The most sprawling probe of its kind for the American church – equaled only by similar state inquiries in Ireland and Australia – the grand jury identified some 300 accused clerics across the six dioceses and 1...

An abuse survivor has been called "rubbish" by a member of Adelaide's former Catholic archbishop Philip Wilson's entourage, in an exchange played out in front of a media scrum. Wilson had just been told by a Newcastle magistrate he could serve his sentence for concealing historical child sex abuse in home detention as opposed to prison...

The new phase of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, both in the U.S. and around the world, reveals how predatory behavior not only robbed children, men, and women of their innocence but also the joy of their faith, and, in many cases, their vocations. Janet Smith, noted professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary...

Under Pope Francis, the Church is now “openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture,” a Vatican advisor has said. In an admiring portrait of the Pope, Fr Thomas Rosica wrote that Francis “breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants” because he is “free from disordered attachments”...

I spent the 1960s studying to be a priest, so I was exempt from the military draft. I never served in Vietnam. I can’t and don’t claim to know what combat is like. But I have friends who did serve, and no one in my generation could really avoid the war because it dominated our country’s life for more than a decade. The Vietnam War intersected with a sexual revolution and a wave of social turmoil here at home that...

The concept of the unanimous consent of the Fathers is widely misunderstood. Trent established a discipline that barred Catholics—even in writings not meant for publication—from contradicting the unanimous consent of the Fathers regarding the interpretation of Scripture. This law remained in force until the 20th century, but it lost legal force following the Second Vatican Council...

When something divinely instituted, like the Catholic priesthood, is tarnished, you know the onslaught from the evil one is formidable. As the sex-abuse scandal of 2002 regains a fresh head of toxic steam — with the revelations that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abused minors and adult men, and with more men coming forward alleging harassment by homosexual superiors in seminary and in the presbyterate — some Church leaders are stepping forward with action and proposals for change...

Members of the Catholic Church sin and give scandal, it’s true, Pope Francis said, but it is up to each Catholic to live the faith as authentically as possible and witness to the world the love of Jesus. “The best way to respond is with witness,” the Pope said in response to a young man who said that the “useless pomp and frequent scandals have made the Church barely credible in our eyes...

The Indonesian capital of Jakarta is home to 10 million people but it is also one of the fastest-sinking cities in the world. If this goes unchecked, parts of the megacity could be entirely submerged by 2050, say researchers. Is it too late? It sits on swampy land, the Java Sea lapping against it, and 13 rivers running through it...

The murder of a prominent bishop in a Coptic monastery in the Egyptian desert has been solved after a monk confessed to the crime. The body of Bishop Epiphanius was found on 29 July at the entrance to his monastic cell in the Saint Macarius monastery, which lies on a desert road north-west of Cairo. The head of the monastery was found in a pool of blood and had received blows to the back of his skull...

Sometimes people will say about married priests, “Well, he’s not going to be available to get out of bed and go to anoint someone at three in the morning.” What a ludicrous statement. Why would it be more difficult for a married man to go to the hospital in the wee hours? I always go when called–not because I have to but because I want to...

A few weeks before I was ordained a Catholic priest in the late autumn of 1994, my superior in the seminary told me that, in his opinion, it was probably the most difficult time in a century to become a priest. Yet, he went on, it was also the most exciting time. I really did not take much notice of what he said. In fact, in my overconfidence...

Go in search of eggs in most foreign countries and you might encounter a strange scene: eggs on a shelf or out in the open air, nowhere near a refrigerator. Shock and confusion may ensue. What are they doing there? And are they safe to eat? We Americans, along with the Japanese, Australians and Scandinavians, tend to be squeamish about our chicken eggs...