Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Raymond Gravel is in the news again.
 
He is a colorful figure.
 
Back in 2006 the Globe and Mail (article no longer available on line) reported
Rev. Raymond Gravel had to get permission from the Vatican to run in a federal by-election. Now, the former prostitute who used to work in gay leather bars has to convince [...]

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Almost two years ago Bishop Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island privately asked Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island not to take communion because of Kennedy’s support for abortion rights. Kennedy has chosen to make this request public, and Tobin has responded.
What Tobin did was not exactly an excommunication, I would guess (does an excommunication [...]

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Although the Nazis did harvest the gold from Holocaust victims’ teeth, I believe the stories of lampshades made from human skin were Allied propaganda (not that such exaggerations were necessary – reality was bad enough). 
However the Nazi “waste not, want not” philosophy is being applied to aborted children: 
Aborted Fetal Material Used in Anti-Wrinkle Creams

 Children of [...]

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The abortionist George Tiller was apparently killed by a pro-lifer. This has led to attacks on the pro-life movement at innately violent.
The widespread denunciations of the Vietnam War as illegal, unjust, cruel, and criminal, led students at Brandeis to plot the violent overthrow of the government.

On Sept. 23, 1970, Brandeis University woke up to [...]

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As the Catholic bishops in the United States are discovering, it is much harder to tighten discipline than to loosen it, as any teacher or parent could have told them. For decades, over a generation, the bishops did nothing to publicly rebuke or discipline Catholic politicians who want abortion to be legal. Catholics got the [...]

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The Gallup poll I cited below is puzzling. Why should Church regularly-Church-going Catholics be laxer in their attitudes to morality than regularly-Church-going Protestants?

The Church regards Tradition as the source of revelation. Tradition is That Which is Handed Over, tradere, and includes Scripture. Scripture is part of the life of the Church, and is to be [...]

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The Gallup Poll, as Bill Cork pointed out, has revealed that Church-going Catholics are far more likely that Church-going non-Catholics (almost all Protestant) to accept immoral behavior.

I do not find this surprising. Other polls I have seen over the years reveal similar patterns.

This data helps explain Notre Dame’s invitation to Obama. Many Catholics accept Obama’s [...]

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Notre Dame did not anticipate the level of criticism it is getting for its invitation to Obama, criticism not only from grass-root pro-life activists, but also from bishops and cardinals. Those who defend the invitation have been rather lame. They claim that the invitation does not show an approval of Obama’s positions on life; this [...]

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For several years my sources in biotechnology have told me that the fight over the use of stem cells obtained by killing human embryos was meaningless, that stem cells taken from the patient’s own body were far more promising. The National Post reports:
The ethical deate over embryonic stem cell use may soon be moot, thanks [...]

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In Der Spiegel, Slavenka Draculic, a Croatian, writes of why she cannot visit Belgrade: 

Why had I not visited for all of these years?
Was it about “them”? About what “they” did to “us”? Or about what Serbs did to themselves? If I traveled there I would carry two decades of images and emotions with me, [...]

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