Harrisburg bishop: No boy-girl contact sports
Bishop Ronald Gainer -- appointed late last year to head the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg -- is ...
View ArticleSkurla, Wuerl on the family synod
It's surely a coincidence that the Vatican's synod on the family began just a day before the U.S. Supreme Court ...
View ArticleBishops call for humbler approach to gays, broken families
Call it a preliminary document at a preliminary synod -- and it is -- but it sets a tone that ...
View ArticleU.S. bishop head: Synod paper good, needs work
The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has applauded a document issued Monday that calls for the church to affirm the positive aspects of gay unions and other couples who lack a...
View ArticlePope's rep: Bishops must show gospel not just talk about it
Catholics Bishops need to show the gospel in their lives, not just talk about it, ...
View ArticleNew Pa. child-abuse affect congregations
Clergy and all religious employees and volunteers who work with children must report suspected child abuse to the state under ...
View ArticleMembers blast Presbyterian offering campaign
This probably wasn't the reaction they were seeking. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is re-evaluating the "bold statement" it attempted to make ...
View ArticlePresbyterians revise campaign seen as offensive
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is revising a marketing campaign for an upcoming offering after critics said it was racially offensive and made light ...
View ArticlePresbyterians revise campaign seen as offensive
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is revising a marketing campaign for an upcoming offering after critics said it was racially offensive and made light ...
View ArticleWeekend religion steady, but not always in church
Average Americans are using as much weekend time on religion as they were a decade ago, according to government data crunched by Catholic statistics guru Mark Gray . But whatever ...
View ArticleFrancis against fracking?
This has been percolating in alternative media some time, but it's getting new attention ...
View ArticleOne degree of Thomas Merton
On today's centenary of the birth of Thomas Merton, the vastly influential Roman Catholic monk and author, it's worth remembering ...
View ArticleEastern Catholics seek to keep the faith alive
One of the most striking things about my interviews with married clergy in the Eastern Catholic churches is that at least two of them didn't grow up Eastern ...
View ArticleGlobal trends buffet Christian-Jewish relations
My story today on local Catholic-Jewish educational cooperation brings up a question : Could efforts like this become a victim of their own success? It's something to watch out for, said ...
View ArticleWe're number 27! (In church-going)
Maybe it comes with being a maroon state, but Pennsylvania ranks 27th nationally on levels of church attendance -- far ...
View ArticleIslamic center offers video tour
In the midst of news focused on horrors committed by extremists in the name of Islam, ...
View ArticlePresbyterian foe of gay unions now a supporter
While many former opponents of same-sex marriage are now supporting it, the reversal by the Rev. Marc Benton, ...
View ArticleCoptic victims recognized as martyrs
The Christian Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt is officially recognizing as martyrs the 21 Copts who were beheaded in a ...
View ArticleQuakers cite progress against mountaintop removal mining
When they held a national gathering last summer at Cal U of Pa., dozens of Quakers took a sidetrip to Pittsburgh to protest at various PNC Bank locations. Members of ...
View ArticleLincoln's journey to the Second Inaugural
One-hundred fifty years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address -- or was it sermon? It was ...
View ArticlePope Francis' popularity near JP2 levels
With his approaching two-year anniversary in office on March 13, Pope Francis has seen his popularity actually grow, at least ...
View ArticleTraditional religions, unaffiliated predominate in Pittsburgh
I find three major takeaways from a new grassroots survey on religion in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The ...
View ArticleJehovah's Witnesses in news again at their North Side birthplace
It's been a long time since Jehovah's Witnesses made big news from the North Side of the Allegheny River, but ...
View ArticleCountering religious violence a challenge
Usama Hasan says his heart sank when he saw English-language propaganda from the self-proclaimed Islamic State ...
View ArticlePresbyterian membership down 5% again
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) lost 5 percent of its members and more than 100 of its churches to other denominations ...
View ArticleMethodist bishop cites highs, lows
In his second-to-last address as spiritual leader of Western Pennsylvania's 170,000 United Methodists, Bishop Thomas Bickerton offered a best-of-times/worst-of-times portrait ...
View ArticleRIP Nicholas Winton, Holocaust hero
A remarkable era came to an end Wednesday with the death of Nicholas Winton, who rescued hundreds of Czechoslovak Jewish ...
View ArticleNuns back Obama on carbon rules
Organizations of women religious sisters, including one that's active in Pittsburgh, are backing new, stricter rules on carbon emissions under ...
View ArticleTop news of '15: Marriage, terror, pope
Each year members of the Religion Newswriters Association polls members for what they see as the top 10 biggest religion stories of the year. Eight of the 10 ...
View ArticleWhatever happened to the charismatic movement?
It may seem an odd question given the explosion of Pentecostal Christianity worldwide, but bear with me. The question came to ...
View Article
