Home Page

MOSCOW – A Russian Orthodox leader said U.S. government attitudes toward religious freedom follow a Western “ideology of human rights.” “U.S. experts are superficial and biased when judging the Orthodox Church’s approach to understanding human rights and the problems of church-state relations,” said Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.

Mary Breslin, reviewing Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (CR, April 12) asserts “cause for a meltdown among those who would refute Mr. Gore’s claims.”

A bit of a correction to your piece “Baltimore is cradle of U.S. Catholic Education” (CR, April 5).

St. Agnes, Catonsville, is inviting Catholics who have become inactive in the church to take another look at the church. If individuals have friends or family members who have “fallen away” and are not sure how to reach out to them, members of the Catholics Returning Home team at St. Agnes would be pleased to contact them and extend a personal invitation.

How can we make the Blessed Virgin weep? How about taking the sacramental that is associated with her and with world peace and naming it for an elite corps of killers – say, a “Ranger Rosary?” (CR, April 5)

ALBANY, N.Y. – Bishop Daniel W. Herzog, recently retired Episcopal bishop of Albany, and his wife, Carol, have left the Episcopal Church and re-entered full communion with the Catholic Church. Both were raised as Catholics and joined the Episcopal Church as adults. In a letter to his successor, Bishop William H. Love, Bishop Herzog said his decision was a result of the decision of the 2003 General Convention of the U.S. Episcopal Church to affirm the election and ordination of an openly gay man, Bishop Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Referring to the turmoil that action caused in the church, he said, “That turmoil was not merely external. It also caused a lot of hidden tears.”

March kicked off the four-week Cool Kids Campaign Reading Challenge and six Catholic schools have opened their books: St. Pius X School, Rodgers Forge; Holy Family School, Randallstown; St. Ursula School, Parkville; St. Katharine, Baltimore; St. Margaret School, Bel Air; and School of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Homeland.

Have a humorous summertime story to share? The Catholic Review seeks grilling and swimming pool anecdotes for our May 31 Summer Sizzle special section.

In their quest to meet recertification criteria mandated by the Maryland State Department of Education, teachers have an alternative to spending $1,500 per graduate level course at a state or private college. Labeled “the best kept secret” by adjunct professor Teri Wilkins, the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Educational Technology Leadership Program is delivering convenience and quality via online courses at affordable costs directly to teachers’ computers.

Though the April 2 tsunami that devastated several Solomon Islands villages occurred halfway across the globe from St. Dominic, Hamilton, parishioners were urged to help in the relief effort. St. Dominic pastor Father James P. Kiesel added a special collection to his Easter Sunday Masses and said it was even more important to reach out to the people affected by the tsunami that killed at least 28 people and flattened villages, because it was smaller in scale than the 2004 tidal wave and will receive less media coverage.

What should be the role of the laity in the Catholic Church in 2007? Catholic Review columnist George Weigel recently discussed “Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church” at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Homeland, March 14, and gave an excellent presentation.

Members of the St. Vincent de Paul committee at St. Francis de Sales, Abingdon, signed their parish up for a $1 million challenge sponsored by the Feinstein Foundation to help fight hunger in their community. “Through the St. Vincent de Paul Society we set aside time for people in the community to come in and ask for help,” said Patti Kazlo, vice president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. “Any given week we get about 30 people coming in for help with money or food. Toward the end of the month we start to run low on food.”