St. Jude

Breaking news:

May 22:
Religious leaders support reworked U.S. Senate climate-change bill
Restraining order keeps autistic 13-year-old out of Minnesota church

May 15:
Rome Diocese erects parish dedicated to use of Tridentine Mass
Teams of church volunteers to offer medical care, moral support
Polish Catholic woman who saved children from Nazis dies at 98

May 13:
Directive from Archbishop Flynn ends lay preaching at Mass
Chinese priests work around disruptions to assess quake damage

May 12:
Pope meets new Israeli ambassador as Israel celebrates 60th anniversary

May 9:
N.Y. bishop ends practice of Communion at celebration of the word

May 8:
Newspapers say pope may apologize to Australian clergy abuse victims
Many new U.S. priests are in their 30s and foreign-born, study says
Catholic aid agency already in Myanmar faces travel restrictions
Brazilian court acquits rancher accused of ordering U.S. nun's murder

April 22:
Scholar, pastor, enigma: German pope defies easy caricature
Former bishop wins presidential election in Paraguay

Blogs:

Catholic Tastes: Fun Godly Gadgets

Margin Notes: Slow torch to China

The Examined Life: I see your pro-choice mayor, and raise you a governor

Signs of the Times: Pope Benedict confronts sexual abuse crisis

Reviews:

Movies
There Will Be Blood
Paul Anderson's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! joins an impressive list of Hollywood classics lancing the boil of ambition and greed in the underbelly of the American dream. Like Citizen Kane, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Godfather, Chinatown, and Wall Street, Anderson's brooding and violent epic takes aim at a ruthless and savage winner-take-all ethic buried deep in the American psyche.

Atonement
Older Catholics may recall a story about the standard penance for gossip. "On a blustery day shake out the contents of a feather pillow from a high window. The next day collect every feather scattered across the landscape."


Music
Marry Me
St. Vincent (Beggars Banquet, 2007)
Marry Me, the first album from St. Vincent, takes the listener from one extreme to the other. Most of the music is light and jazzy, but the lyrics are laden with images of violence, war, revenge, and uncertainties.


Books
Before Dallas
Anyone who has been confounded by the church's mishandling of the child sex abuse crisis will benefit from Nicholas Cafardi's detailed account of the church's response prior to the 2002 approval in Dallas of the U.S. bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

As Cafardi, both a civil and canon lawyer, points out, concern about sexual abuse was not born of the 20th century. Collections of canon law have long had provisions on how to handle such offenses by clerics. Why these were not followed, and why other roads were taken instead, serve as the core of the book.