Rosica faces sexual assault lawsuit Skip to content Well-known media figure Fr. Thomas Rosica has been accused of sexually assaulting a younger priest during the lead up to the Church’s 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada. Fr. Thomas Rosica. Credit: Chris Adamczyk, Manager, Marketing and Communications, Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation – Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation. Wikimedia/ CC BY SA 4.0  Rosica has denied any “improper conduct” with the priest, and urged a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against him, so that allegations can be addressed in a canonical court. Rosica’s faculties for priestly ministry were withdrawn in March, after the alleged victim filed suit against him. Rosica was the principal organizer of the 2002 World Youth Day, a Vatican adviso...

“Inculturation” has been a Catholic buzzword for over a half-century. It’s not the most elegant neologism, smacking as it does of sociologese. Still, it expresses a truth of Catholic missionary practice two millennia old: the Church uses whatever appropriate materials are at hand in a given culture to make the Gospel proposal come alive in that milieu. The parables of Jesus are the biblical warrant for this method of evangelization. The Lord used the familiar cultural materials at hand to drive home key truths about the Kingdom of God breaking into history – the merchant who finds the pearl of great price, the sower of seed who waits patiently for the harvest, the mustard seed that becomes a great tree, and so forth. St. Paul was an early “inculturator” in Acts 17, where he tried to convin...

Architecture By Julia Hammond Read time: 5 minutes At one time in history, there was nothing extraordinary about a building project dragging on for many years. Places of worship could take centuries to complete. For instance, the Cologne Cathedral — once the world’s tallest building — took 632 years to finish, while construction of the Duomo in Milan was a mammoth 579-year affair. In modern times, however, it’s relatively rare for a building to take that long to erect. But there’s been one notable exception: the Sagrada Família, the crown jewel of Barcelona, Spain. Its construction is a tale of ambition, devotion, and dogged determination — and it might soon have a closing chapter. Discover the fascinating history of one of the world’s most famous cathedrals and find out when it’s finally ...

Wednesdays are always my busiest days, when it comes to life at my computer keyboard. First of all, there is my “On Religion” column deadline. That’s been carved into my calendar for almost 36 years. This is also the day when I work with the Lutheran Public Radio team to research and produce the weekly “Crossroads” podcast. We’ve been doing that for over a decade. Right now, you can toss in lots of packing for our move from Oak Ridge up to the Tri-Cities region in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee. Late last week, I reached for a book (during an online interview with Jonathan “The Anxious Generation” Haidt) and realized that I had already packed that shelf and the boxes were sitting in my future office nearly 150 miles away. Then, dang it, the same thing happened with a different book d...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 27, 2024 A very well-informed friend sent me a link to an article on the increased numbers of young Catholic women wearing veils in Church. I have certainly noticed this among Hispanic women in my own parish, for whom this is still a tradition, and among those characterized by a kind of piety that cherishes—and I do not mean “brandishes”—external signs of devotion. But apparently it is a wider trend, and includes a generation of younger women who were not raised in veils. On balance, I regard this as a good thing, in much the same way as I like to see men using a pocket as a repository for their rosaries, and to see those rosaries coming out during times of prayer. Of course, a veil is a stronger outward sign and one with Scrip...

It should have been the best week South America had in recent memory. On March 5, 2013, the death of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan commandante of the Castro mold, was announced. A week later, the conclave began that would elect Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina on March 13 — the first-ever supreme pontiff from South America.   It turned out that Chavismo did not die with Chávez, and the successor regime of Nicolás Maduro has delivered widespread repression while pauperizing what should be a rich country. And for 11 years, the Latin American pope has been vexed by how to deal with Maduro’s Venezuela.   It has been an 11-year nightmare for the Venezuelan people — some 8 million of whom have fled the country — and an ongoing frustration for Vatican diplomacy, which has not managed...