A dispute over abortion between the only remaining Kennedy in Congress and his Roman Catholic bishop has highlighted the political volatility of the issue and the challenge it presents to the nation's Catholics.
Rhode Island's top Roman Catholic leader has asked Rep. Patrick Kennedy to stop taking Communion over his support for abortion rights, the diocese said Sunday.
Pope Benedict XVI is expected to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury on Saturday, the first meeting between the religious leaders since a Catholic overture to disaffected Anglicans that some commentators compared to a hostile takeover on Wall Street.
"I'll take two chili, uh..." a hungry customer stammers at the front of a two-hour-long line. "Chile rellenos," the money-handler trills back in perfect Spanish. This is not a trendy Tex-Mex restaurant; and it's more than 1,000 miles from the Mexican border.
Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday, including a 19th-century priest who worked with ostracized leprosy patients in Hawaii before contracting the disease himself and dying from it.
Shortly before he died from brain cancer, Sen. Ted Kennedy wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI. President Obama delivered the letter to the pontiff during his visit to the Vatican in July.
Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy didn't wear his faith on his sleeve, but those close to him say Catholicism was much more than an ethnic and cultural identity.
After hours of back and forth between members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided Friday evening to accept noncelibate clergy members and lay leaders who are in "lifelong" and "monogamous" same-sex relationships.
A dispute over abortion between the only remaining Kennedy in Congress and his Roman Catholic bishop has highlighted the political volatility of the issue and the challenge it presents to the nation's Catholics.
Rhode Island's top Roman Catholic leader has asked Rep. Patrick Kennedy to stop taking Communion over his support for abortion rights, the diocese said Sunday.
Pope Benedict XVI is expected to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury on Saturday, the first meeting between the religious leaders since a Catholic overture to disaffected Anglicans that some commentators compared to a hostile takeover on Wall Street.
"I'll take two chili, uh..." a hungry customer stammers at the front of a two-hour-long line. "Chile rellenos," the money-handler trills back in perfect Spanish. This is not a trendy Tex-Mex restaurant; and it's more than 1,000 miles from the Mexican border.
Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday, including a 19th-century priest who worked with ostracized leprosy patients in Hawaii before contracting the disease himself and dying from it.
Shortly before he died from brain cancer, Sen. Ted Kennedy wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI. President Obama delivered the letter to the pontiff during his visit to the Vatican in July.
Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy didn't wear his faith on his sleeve, but those close to him say Catholicism was much more than an ethnic and cultural identity.
After hours of back and forth between members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided Friday evening to accept noncelibate clergy members and lay leaders who are in "lifelong" and "monogamous" same-sex relationships.
Episcopal churches in California and Minnesota moved toward appointing gay bishops over the weekend, less than a month after the denomination lifted a self-imposed freeze on promoting openly gay clergy into the top ranks of the church.
The archbishops of Canterbury and York are recommending that churches stop sharing the chalice at communion over swine flu fears, the Church of England said Thursday.
The Episcopal Church has moved decisively closer to full acceptance of gay men and lesbians, taking steps toward recognizing same-sex marriage and gay bishops.
U.S. President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI discussed current affairs, the Catholic Church's teachings and abortion as they met for the first time Friday, according to the White House and the Vatican.
Father Alberto Cutie, an internationally known Catholic priest who admitted having a romantic affair and breaking his vow of celibacy, was married this week in Miami, Florida.
Father Alberto Cutie, an internationally known Catholic priest who admitted having a romantic affair and breaking his vow of celibacy, is joining the Episcopal Church to be with the woman he loves, he said Thursday.
It's an issue that simply won't go away. In spite of signals from the Vatican discouraging even discussions of obligatory celibacy for Catholic priests, the almost 1,000-year-old rule is under the microscope. And it will be for decades to come. Here's why.
The scandal surrounding the Rev. Alberto Cutie has raised questions in the minds of many concerning the Catholic Church's discipline of priestly celibacy. Why does the church continue to defend a practice that seems so unnatural and so unnecessary?
Pope Benedict XVI completed his eight-day tour of the Holy Land on Friday with an exhortation to both Israelis and Palestinians to work through their decades-old conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday to use his moral authority to thwart anti-Semitic sentiment and hatred toward Israel, especially by Iran.
Three years ago, the film based on Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" was the focus of protest and controversy, with a Vatican archbishop calling for a boycott and Catholics at many levels refuting plot points.
With his visit already bogged down in historical disputes, the pope's message of peace in Gaza was interrupted Monday by an impromptu speaker who fueled the longtime resentment between Palestinians and Israelis.
There is an assumption that the visit to the Middle East by Pope Benedict XVI will be a profound event. However, no one seems to be asking why there is such an expectation.
As he arrives in Israel, the focus for Pope Benedict XVI shifts from Catholic/Muslim ties, which were at the heart of his three-day visit to Jordan, to relations with Judaism.
For more than 20 years, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Vatican's top doctrinal czar, was the intellectual architect of the papacy of John Paul II.
Pope Benedict XVI arrived Friday in Amman, Jordan, for a weeklong visit to the Middle East that he hopes will help "foster good relations between Christians and Muslims."
Pope Benedict XVI will leave for a weeklong tour of the Middle East Friday morning, the first papal visit to some of Christianity's most holy places since Pope John Paul II made the pilgrimage in 2000.
Along the Rust Belt and in cities dotting the Northeast and Upper Midwest, Catholic communities are mourning the loss of parishes. It's a five-year trend of sweeping church closures that most recently hit Cleveland, Ohio.
An estimated 1 million people turned out to hear Pope Benedict XVI preach a Mass in Angola on Sunday, the last major event of his first trip to Africa.
Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Angola on Friday as part of his week-long visit to Africa, a journey marked by the pontiff's controversial comments on reproductive issues and some of the continent's political regimes.
Tens of thousands of people packed a soccer stadium in Cameroon Thursday, including President Paul Biya and his wife, for the first large-scale mass of Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to Africa.
The African-American religious community deserves considerable praise for taking leadership of the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century.
The pope has admitted making mistakes over the lifting of the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, saying the church will make much greater use of the Internet in the future to help avoid such controversies.
Pope Benedict XVI will not visit Israel's Holocaust museum when he makes his first trip to the region as pope in May, though he will visit a memorial that is part of the site, his ambassador to Israel said Tuesday.
James Dobson, the influential evangelical leader of the Christian ministry Focus on the Family, has stepped down as board chairman, he announced Friday.
The Vatican said Friday it is not satisfied by the apology issued by a Catholic bishop who denied the Holocaust, saying the cleric must still clearly "distance himself" from the controversial comments.
The Catholic bishop who caused outrage for denying the Nazis had systematically murdered millions of Jews in the Holocaust apologized Thursday for his statements.
A Catholic bishop who was ordered to leave Argentina because of his inflammatory comments about the Holocaust left the country Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said.
Bishop Richard Williamson, who last month denied the existence of the Holocaust in an interview with Swedish television, was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days, the Ministry of Interior said.
Pope Benedict XVI met Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, at the Vatican on Wednesday, both sides said in statements -- but that seems to be all they agree on.
The gray-haired bishop speaks haltingly at first, choosing his words with care. He pauses, stumbles, repeats himself, underlines words vocally for emphasis. But then he warms to his topic, and the words begin to flow freely.
A German court Monday refused to intervene in the case of Bishop Richard Williamson, who is facing prosecution for denying the Holocaust -- a crime in Germany.
A Holocaust denier Pope Benedict XVI welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church last month has been removed from his position as head of a seminary in Argentina.
Germany's Catholic bishops are calling for the expulsion of a bishop, recently brought back into the church by Pope Benedict XVI, after new reports that Richard Williamson denies the Holocaust.
Manti Te'o refrained from mincing words each time he met a college coach. Te'o, one of the nation's highest ranked linebacker prospects, told every coach who recruited him that, after his freshman season, he might leave the country for two years.
The Vatican says it has ordered a controversial bishop who denies the Holocaust to "distance himself" from his views "in an absolutely unequivocal and public manner."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI firmly reject denial of the Holocaust, a week and a half after the Vatican rehabilitated a bishop who denied the Nazis had intentionally murdered 6 million Jews.
The Russian Orthodox Church enthroned a new leader Sunday at Moscow's spectacular Christ the Savior Cathedral in a ceremony attended by Russian leaders and Christian delegations from around the world.
Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether leaders of the Los Angeles archdiocese committed fraud by failing to properly deal with charges of priests molesting children, two law-enforcement sources told CNN.
Jewish officials in Israel and abroad are outraged that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lift the excommunication of a British bishop who denies that Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers.
Theological conservatives estranged from the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church in Canada formed a rival North American "province" Wednesday.
Breakaway conservative members of the Episcopal Church in the United States and its Canadian counterpart are expected to formally announce Wednesday the formation of a rival North American Anglican church.
Thousands of Cubans, including President Raul Castro and Communist Party leaders, flocked to a Catholic ceremony on Saturday putting a 19th century monk on the path to sainthood.
When John Lennon remarked in 1966 that the Beatles were then "more popular than Jesus" his comments prompted outrage in the United States. But this weekend the Vatican's newspaper paid tribute to the band on the 40th anniversary of the release of the "White Album" in an article interpreted by some as a papal pardon for Lennon.
The road to sainthood for the Nazi-era Pontiff had been put on hold, but on the holiest of Jewish holy days, the current Pope appears to renew the process
The attempts by Obama's running mate to justify his pro-choice abortion views have prompted criticism from the Catholic bishops. Will this be John Kerry redux?
A smooth-talking Italian businessman who once dated actress Anne Hathaway and claimed to have friends in high places at the Vatican is headed to prison after pleading guilty Wednesday in a Manhattan real estate fraud case
Her faith is one of the reasons many evangelical Christians are excited about Sarah Palin's addition to the Republican presidential ticket, but the Alaska governor's evangelical beliefs have also drawn scrutiny.
The Vatican says it wants to move the remains of Cardinal John Henry Newman to allow the faithful to pray to him. But gay rights activists see another reason
Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama plan to appear together Saturday at a minister-moderated forum held in a church as thousands of evangelicals plan to gather in the nation's capital to pressure both men move further to the right on social issues.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, struggling to hold together the troubled world Anglican family, urged church leaders gathered Sunday in England not to consecrate another gay bishop
Conservatives are up in arms over Mexico City legalizing abortion and same-sex unions. But leftist politicians believe the government's social conservatism could be its downfall
Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday offered his strongest public statement yet on sex abuse against minors by Roman Catholic priests, apologizing to victims and calling the abuse "evil."
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