Peter Feuerherd

As the U.S. bishops prepare to meet June 11-14 in Baltimore, with sex abuse concerns at the top of their agenda, they don't lack for advice. Across the Catholic spectrum, groups and individuals have issued statements and offered declarations about how to fix the church.

The leader of Aid to the Church in Need International says that the world is ignoring anti-Christian violence. But right-wing populist movements, particularly in Europe, are exploiting the cause for political purposes.

 

The Field Hospital: Susan Bigelow Reynolds offers insight on changing the church; a police raid on three diocesan sites in Dallas shakes Catholics; a look at modern godparents; and more

Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, McCarrick's former secretary, shared correspondence that he says show high-ranking church officials likely knew about restrictions that the then-cardinal ignored.

The Field Hospital: Donors to Catholic Charities don't want funds to go to Buffalo Diocese; evangelicals incorporate Catholic prayer styles; Catholic membership down in Michigan.

In 2002, David Spotanski, the then-vice chancellor for the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, wrote a memo that felt so important that he went to then-Bishop Wilton Gregory's house and read it aloud. 

Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, New York, has suspended three priests after seminarians complained about lewd comments allegedly made by the clergy at an April 11 party at Saints Peter and Paul Rectory in Hamburg, New York.

As Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory prepares to be consecrated archbishop of Washington May 21, Georgia attorney general Chris Carr announced that the Catholic Church in Georgia is being investigated by his office over its handling of sex abuse cases.

At first, parishioners welcomed the Institute of Christ the King, hoping that its presence would increase attendance and assure the parish's survival. But the group's Latin Mass and radical traditionalism are challenging the community's core Vatican II values. 

The Field Hospital: Parish accompanies those seeking U.S. citizenship; Pittsburgh consolidates parishes; Mass cancellation called providential after roof collapse; fake priest scammers.

The Field Hospital: The agreement between the Movement to Restore Trust and Bishop Richard Malone is the latest development in the crisis that has enveloped the Buffalo Diocese.

The Field Hospital: Catholic bishops defend those fearing deportation; closed parishes become low-income housing; serving the poor in a gentrifying neighborhood.

After a ruling from the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy, Bishop Frank Dewane of the diocese of Venice, Florida, has imposed penalties on Fr. Christopher Senk. But members of the priest's Sanibel Island parish say he is being maligned. 

The Field Hospital: Former convict thanks parishioners for prison ministry; the questions of parish consolidations; Irish seminarians expected to spend more time in parishes.

Struggling Catholics who attended the "(Re)Imagining Catholic Vocation" event, sponsored by Call to Action, responded "that I didn't know this space existed," said the organizer.

St. André Bessette Catholic Church staff say, "We are not here to fix anyone. We're here to be compassionate." The parish offers something to the area's homeless nearly everyday.

The Field Hospital: Historic black church in Philadelphia to close; New Orleans Archdiocese fights porn epidemic; parish copes with priests' deaths; Christians persecuted around the world.

Ignatius Kaigama painted a picture of a country confronting strife between Christians and Muslims, with a church committed to upholding what he described as traditional values in the face of Western encroachment.

Seminaries — set apart from the secular world and seen by some as a breeding ground for clericalist attitudes that fostered the sex abuse crisis — have come in for criticism. Yet leaders of Catholic seminaries say that their priestly formation programs have already successfully implemented curricula that can check future sex abuse.

Parish Roundup:  Archdiocese launches mental health ministry; Portland Catholics combat homelessness; while some Catholics get to vote on parish mergers, another merger is complicated by history of racial segregation; the pivotal role of millennial Latino Catholics in the church's future.