Louis A. Ruprecht

Why are the US Catholic Bishops exerting so much energy and money and time on the matter of contraception, with no similarly public cries of outrage against the death penalty, state-sponsored torture, or the two preemptive wars in which the US has involved itself for fully a decade?

When the last non-Italian pope until John Paul II, a Dutch pope (Adrian VI), came to Rome for the first time. The cardinals proudly gave him a tour of the Belvedere. He was shocked and outraged, informing them (in Latin no less) that “these are nothing but pagan idols!” He threatened to sell off the whole collection, and in the interim built cabinets for them, locked the doors, and kept the key to himself.

In a relatively unprecedented move, Greek police arrested the Rector of the thousand-year-old Vathipedi Monastery, Father Ephraim, on Christmas Eve. He had just returned to the Monastery, which is located on the most sacred ground in all of Orthodox Christendom, which we have now discovered to be the only semi-autonomous region of Mount Athos.