archives

This whole thing is a mess. I’m sure there are more elegant words for it. Like “complex,” for instance. Or, “confusing,” for instance. Or, “destabilizing,” for instance. But in the final analysis, the fact is that the Democratic primary is a mess. What anyone will know with certainty when it’s over, is anybody’s guess. But for right now, at least, the system of choosing a candidate does not feel either clear or decisive.

The question, of course, is why not? And the fact that the answer to that question is no clearer than the primary itself may be the problem.

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Seeking to stop Mormons from posthumously baptizing Catholic ancestors, the Vatican has instructed bishops around the world not to share parish registers with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy issued the directive in a letter to national bishops' conferences in early April, according to Catholic News Service. The letter referred to "grave reservations" expressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic Church's highest doctrinal body.

"The trouble with the Catholic Worker," Dorothy Day writes in her newly published diaries, The Duty of Delight, "is that one is so busy living that there is not time to write about it." She wrote a dozen books, nevertheless, and a monthly column for nearly five decades. Plus thousands of speeches and over a thousand pages of journal entries, which we can now read for the first time.