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Ever since his famous warning about a “dictatorship of relativism” shortly before his election three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI has been trying to kick-start a global conversation about truth. In particular, Benedict yearns for a new look at truth within the Western secular academy, that exotic region where Jacques Derrida’s relativist maxim “there is nothing outside the text” has, ironically, achieved the status of a near-absolute.

This weekend, in the enchanting Alpine setting of Lugano, Switzerland, a cross-section of prominent Western intellectuals is taking up the papal challenge. Organized by the Balzan Foundation, which each year awards the Swiss-Italian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, this unique gathering of scientists, philosophers, and eggheads of all stripes, most of them without any specific religious conviction, is titled, simply, “The Truth.”

I’m in Lugano covering the event. In effect, the two-day summit represents the most intriguing test to date of how Benedict’s effort to restore confidence in truth is playing among secular makers of opinion.

By Dennis Coday
NCR staff writer

Australian Bishop Geoffery Robinson has said he is “disappointed” in his fellow bishops, who last week issued a statement saying they had found “doctrinal difficulties” with Robinson’s book on sex abuse and reform in the Catholic church.

Robinson is in the United States on a book tour for Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, which was published last fall in Australia is now available in North American through Collegeville, Minn.-based Liturgical Press.

What should appear on this page is the homily Bishop Thomas Gumbleton preached on Pentecost Sunday. Unfortunately, a technical glitch means that the homily was not recorded and so no transcript could be made.

As it happens, we do have a transcript and recording of a Pentecost homily by Jesuit Fr. John Dear. You can read the transcript and listen to the recording by following this link: The Pentecost of peace.

A homily by Bishop Gumbleton will appear next week.

By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee, who endorsed presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and drew sharp criticism for comments critics called anti-Catholic, has written a letter expressing "deep regret" for causing any harm.

Hagee, who leads Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, was harshly criticized by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and Democratic National Committee officials.

By Dennis Coday, NCR staff writer

Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus By Bishop Geoffrey Robinson; Foreword by Donald Cozzens Liturgical Press, 320 pages, $24.95

Days before Australian Bishop Geoffery Robinson was to begin a U.S. tour promoting his book about church reform, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, the Australian bishops’ conference released a statement saying they had found “doctrinal difficulties” with the book.

Here’s a Catholic News Service story:

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By Dan McAloon, Catholic News Service

SYDNEY, Australia -- The Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference has listed its concerns with a retired bishop's book that critiques sexual and authoritarian abuses in the church.

The 2007 book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, was written by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney and former head of the church's abuse panel.

The bishops said that "after correspondence and conversation" with Bishop Robinson, "it is clear that doctrinal difficulties remain." Central to these, they said, is Bishop Robinson's "questioning of the authority of the Catholic Church to teach the truth definitively."

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

The Catholic archbishop of Kansas City, Kan., said he hopes Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will abide by his request to stop receiving Communion before he has to take further punitive measures because she supports abortion rights.

"There are a number of pastoral alternatives open to me at this time" if Sebelius refuses, including barring the governor from Communion or excommunicating her from the church, Archbishop Joseph Naumann said in an interview late Monday (May 12).

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Intelligent life may exist on other planets and has no need of redemption through Jesus Christ, the Vatican's top astronomer said.

Fr. Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted in the Wednesday (May 14) edition of the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

In May 1983 and May 1985, I attended Sojourners' "Peace Pentecost" rallies in Washington, D.C. -- prayer services and inspiring speakers and nonviolent demonstrations against war and injustice. Those were some of the most electrifying Pentecost experiences of my life. The police hauled hundreds away as we proclaimed God's reign of peace. I recall those days as we enter another Pentecost season, and wonder, how do we live out the drama of Pentecost today?

By Catholic News Service

LEIEINTAN, Myanmar -- Pascal Than Hlaing is just one of many who are grieving in Leieintan, a village where only one house is left standing and the Baptist and Catholic churches had their roofs torn open.

Than Hlaing mourns the death of two of his three children.

"One of my sons was swept away when the water level was up to his neck," the 31-year-old Catholic father told the Asian church news agency UCA News May 9, referring to his 6-year-old boy. Cyclone Nargis hammered the Irrawaddy delta region early May 3 as it blew in from the Bay of Bengal, sending a wall of seawater inland for miles.

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion rights and confesses her error, said Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan.

Naumann said he asked the governor to stop receiving Communion in a letter last August, but learned recently that Sebelius took the sacrament at a Kansas parish.