‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ review now posted

The review of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” by the U.S. bishops’ Office for Film & Broadcasting is now posted in our movie review section. You’ll see that, for rather obvious reasons, the film is classified A-II — adults and adolescents.

For many in Jerusalem, Bush means traffic

JERUSALEM — President George W. Bush is back in town. For the second time. I hear the helicopters announcing the U.S. president’s arrival to Jerusalem overhead as I type.
He is meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He is attending Peres’ much-touted “Facing Tomorrow Conference” along with many other dignitaries and intellectuals, [...]

Latin’s revival

VATICAN CITY — Surprisingly, the pope’s own Latinist had nothing to do with the recent birth of Latin on the Vatican’s official Web site.
Wisconsin native Carmelite Father Reginald Foster told CNS the other day he didn’t have a hand in the birth of the new “Sancta Sedes” section on www.vatican.va, but he said he was thrilled [...]

Revisiting ‘do space aliens have souls?’

This week’s comments by the Vatican’s astronomer on whether space aliens would need Christ’s redemption is not the first time the church has examined the topic. Our Carol Glatz in Rome wrote a story two and a half years ago headlined “Do space aliens have souls? Inquiring minds can check Jesuit’s book.”
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — [...]

Water for life

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican has just announced a press conference next Monday to unveil its pavilion at this summer’s Expo Zaragoza 2008. Like the international exposition, the theme of the Vatican pavilion will be water.
It’s a topic that has appeared with increasing frequency on the Vatican’s radar in recent years, with Vatican agencies and academies [...]

Indulgence alert

Seeking an indulgence for remission of sin may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but judging from the Web hits on our story last December on how to gain an indulgence for the 150th anniversary of the apparitions at Lourdes, they certainly remain a popular form of Catholic devotion.
So there’s a new chance for a plenary indulgence [...]

Pick a pope calendar

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has just released its 2009 calendar. Well, actually, it’s just released two calendars for 2009.
One features what the newspaper calls “the most beautiful photographs of His Holiness Benedict XVI” – strolling while praying the rosary, kissing babies, kneeling in prayer – and the other, “the most beautiful photographs of [...]

The Ethiopian Catholic Church

Michael La Civilta, executive editor on ONE magazine, writes about the tiny Ethiopian Catholic Church in the latest issue of the magazine. The magazine is the official publication of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, which works on behalf of the historic Christian East.

Chinese at the Vatican

It’s not every day that the Vatican newspaper runs its lead story in Chinese.
Yet there it was in today’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano, a top-of-the-front-page treatment of Pope Benedict’s speech to members of China’s Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Opera House Chorus — in a Chinese translation.
It was the first time the newspaper had published a papal text so [...]

Judges and Catholic teaching

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, probably the best known Catholic judge in the country, recently sat down for an interview with Tim Russert at MSNBC, saying among other things that his religion had “nothing at all” to do with strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Over at dotCommonweal, David Gibson started an interesting discussion about Scalia’s argument that there’s no such [...]