Program aims to foster Catholic leaders

People
Nov 16, 2010

LANSING, MICH. -- Joel Poliskey is graduating this spring with a physiology degree from Michigan State University. As part of an elite Medical Scholars program, he was admitted to medical school as a freshman and every semester has been on the dean’s list. Ten hours a week are spent riding with the Michigan State cycling team -- he is their fastest rider. Yet in spite of these accomplishments, Poliskey says that his best moments in college have been those he spends in the little Catholic parish right across the street from his house, St. John Student Center.

“We have a saying here that we study at Michigan State, but we get our education from St. John’s,” Poliskey said. He estimates that he spends more than 20 hours a week participating in St. John Student Center activities, whether leading the Catholic men’s group at his house, teaching the catechism on campus, or spending late nights praying the rosary in front of the tabernacle.

Progressive Polish Catholic Church is excommunicated

NCR Today
Aug 14, 2010

A seven year schism between St. Stanislaus Kostka's Catholic church in St. Louis, MO, and the St. Louis archdiocese could have ended with a settlement proposed to the parishioners by the diocese. Parishioners voted no. Read more in the The New York Times article.

The pure, peaceable, impartial Christianity of Christ

NCR Today
Aug 5, 2010

Re-reading Frederick Douglass’ narrative I came across a stirring confession that resonated deeply with Anne Rice grappling with Christianity she is most recently known for,
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“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

Rice’s denouncement of Catholicism is one that stirs in the hearts of so many Catholics who desire to be the “pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ” for others and are frequently misrepresented by what Rice calls an “anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-life” faith.

Valerie Elverton Dixon, writer for the Washington Post, writes an open letter to Anne Rice on her pained decision to leave the church. Dixon’s letter asks Rice to consider the other members of the Christian faith who similarly toil with the misrepresentation and seek “to be better witnesses for incarnate Love today than we were yesterday.”

'Welfare to work' doesn't work, Network finds

Justice
Aug 5, 2010

In the current economic climate of prolonged recession, “welfare-to-work” programs are insufficient to meet their stated aim of raising families out of poverty, according to a new report from Network, the Catholic social justice lobby based in Washington.