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In this time of economic crisis, everyone is looking for ways to tighten their wallets. And if you are looking for a cheap date idea, the US Bishops Conference has exactly what you are looking for.

Well, maybe.

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Gone are the days of giving up chocolate or potato chips or soda for Lent. Well, in Italy, at least.

In the run up to Ash Wednesday, Archbishop Benito Cocchi of Modesta suggested that Catholic youth give up text messaging on Fridays in order to "detox from the virtual world and get back in touch with themselves."

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If you thought the Academy Award winners were surprising, you won’t believe who won the 2009 Culture of Life Movie Awards.

These awards are given by Madrid’s archdiocesan weekly magazine, Alpha and Omega, to movies that uphold the culture of “life.”

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After the recent debacles with Holocaust-denying and pro-Katrina bishops and all communication at the Vatican seemingly imploding, people are starting to wonder: What exactly does Pope Benedict do all day?

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In an apparent attempt to hammer in the school’s loyalty to Catholicism, Boston College officials have placed a crucifix in each classroom and Christian artwork around the Jesuit University’s campus.

Some faculty members have complained. Professor Dan Kirschner called the move “insensitive” to people of other faiths. And Professor Maxim Shrayer asserted that that religious imagery is “contrary to the letter and spirit of open intellectual discourse.”

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According to the Vatican, gender doesn’t exist. Well, as least they ignore the theory of gender as socially constructed roles and stick to the belief that gender equals biological sex.

This advances the sexism in the Catholic church. For instance, a key argument against the ordination of women in the Catholic church was once that women and men inherently have different attributes that make men fit for the priesthood and women less so.

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Just a week after Pope Benedict made the decision to bring holocaust-denier Bishop Richard Williamson and his ultra-conservative bishop friends back into the fold, Pope Benedict elevated Father Gerhard Maria Wagner to auxiliary bishop in the diocese of Linz, Austria.

Now, if you thought Williamson’s assertions on the Holocaust sounded crazy, just wait until you hear what Wagner has to say on everything from Hurricane Katrina to Harry Potter.

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Today, the Church of England came several steps closer to achieving women’s equality within the church. The national assembly voted, after only two hours of debate, to move legislation in support women bishops to the revision committee stage.

People on both sides of the debate have met the advancement with varying levels of apprehension. Voices on the side of women’s ordination in the Church of England believed that the legislation did not go far enough. Graham James, the Bishop of Norwich and a support of women bishops stated:

I believe that women should and will be ordained to the episcopate but what I see before me in the proposed legislation is an episcopacy so damaged and fractured as to be scarcely worthy of the name…I cannot see any amendments that would render it satisfactory.

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During the last few days, Pope Benedict has spent a lot of time discussing St. Paul – bringing an end to his series of lectures dedicated to the Pauline Year.

On Monday, the pope met with members of religious congregations. In his remarks, he focused on St. Paul’s inclination towards chastity. You can watch a not-so-enthusiastic summary of the talk on the Vatican’s new Youtube channel:

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At the end of last week, Sister Eva-Maria Ackerman, member of the American province of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, announced that the Vatican has initiated an apostolic visitation of institutes for women religious in the United States. Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, has been appointed as the apostolic visitor for the study.

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After all of the hubbub around the Pope’s recent decision to bring four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X back into the fold, both the Vatican and the Lefebvrites are trying hard to make amends. However, their “apologies” come off rather less than sincere.

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On January 21, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four bishops, members of the Society of St. Pius X who broke with Rome over their protests that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council were too progressive. The bishops were excommunicated over twenty years ago after they were consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve without papal permission.

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Upon the inauguration of the forty-forth president of the United States of America, two messages were delivered to President Obama. While both of these messages were from representatives of the Catholic church hierarchy, they could not have been more different in tone.

The first message was sent in form of telegram from Pope Benedict XVI (perhaps he only reserves text messaging for fellow Catholics). The tone of the telegram was friendly and welcoming. It read:

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Whatever the reason may be—lack of trust in the Church hierarchy after the sex abuse scandal, disagreement with the Church’s definition of sin (especially when it comes to birth control, homosexuality, etc.), or the rise in popularity of communal confession services—Catholics around the world have stopped going to confession. And this has not gone unnoticed by the Vatican.

In an effort to bring Catholics back to the confessional, the Vatican has offered the public an insider view into its oldest and most secret tribunal, the Apostolic Penitentiary. For 830 years, the Apostolic Penitentiary has handled the confessions of sins so severe that only the pope can grant absolution. The five sins that make the cut are shocking—or perhaps it is the sins left off the list that seems a bit off. Murder isn’t on it, nor is sexual abuse. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, two out of the three cases involve sexual sins. Here are the cases that the penitentiary deals with:

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The Sixth World Meeting of Families will be held this week in Mexico City. The meeting, with the theme of "The family, teacher of human and Christian values," organized by the pontifical council of the family, will bring together clergy and lay people from over 90 countries.

The following message from Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the pontifical council for the family, reveals the tenor of the conference:

The family today must confront, with creativity and a proactive spirit, the challenge of an individualist and mercantilist culture, based on production and consumption. Unfortunately, we have a mistaken concept of freedom, understood as an autonomy closed in on itself; other forms of cohabitation are privileged that obscure the value of the family, based on the marriage of one man and one woman. With this mistaken mentality, very often laws are made—without widespread social consensus and under the impulse of small but active groups, strongly ideological and with extensive economic resources—that permit easy abortion, rapid divorce, and euthanasia. Responding to these challenges is a difficult moral obligation.

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A Greek Orthodox bishop is suing a group of LGBT activists for “defamation.” Bishop Seraphim of Peiraeus, a diocese of the Orthodox Church of Greece, is asking for one million euros in reparations.

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Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the Vatican-based World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, wrote an article on the birth control pill that appeared in the January 4 edition of L'Osservatore Romano. In the article, he stated:

We have sufficient evidence to argue that one of the considerable factors contributing to male infertility in the West—with its ever decreasing numbers of spermatozoa in men—is environmental pollution caused by the byproducts of the pill.

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Marquis LaFortune, newlywed and former Catholic high school teacher, was fired from her position at Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, Texas. The reason? Well, on November 22, LaFortune married Benjamin Stakes—a divorcé. The status of LaFortune’s husband-to-be was revealed in a school newspaper featuring the couple’s upcoming nuptials.

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Last week a new search engine was launched just for Catholics, aptly named “Catholic Google.” Powered by but not affiliated with Google.com, its tag line reads “The best way for good Catholics to surf the web.” Using “safe search” technology, CatholicGoogle.com gives weight to “Catholic” websites and avoids “unsavory content.”

So, here is what came up on a few searches I tried…

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On Monday, Pope Benedict equated saving the rainforest with saving gay men and lesbians: “(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pope said in a holiday address. “The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.” According to Reuters, the pope also defended the Church’s right to “speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected.”

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On December 1, as Mexicans began to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Playboy Mexico hit the newsstands. The cover featured Argentine model Maria Florencia Onori wearing only a white head covering with the words “Te Adoramos Maria” or “We adore you, Maria” written beside her.

While Mary has become a cultural symbol as much as a religious icon in Mexico and around the world, the Catholic hierarchy was not pleased.

When the controversy first erupted, Playboy did not cite freedom of speech or press, opting instead to...

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In recent news, the Vatican has proven that they are amicable to having women in leadership, but only on their terms.

On December 1, Colonel Daniel Anrig took over as commander of the Swiss Guard – the military force of Vatican City. After his appointment, a Swiss news website asked Anrig if he would be open to the possibility of women joining the Pontifical Swiss Guard. Anrig replied, “As commander, one has to be always open to new questions including those relating to recruitment.”

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A recent title on a press release from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) read:

Cultural Diversity Secretariat Hosts Consultation on Faith Formation among Hispanics to Advance Bishops’ Priority

To advance the priority of the bishops?

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In 1966, John Lennon famously stated:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I do not know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity... We're more popular than Jesus now.

At the time the Vatican was pretty peeved with Lennon. But they have decided to make peace with this pop star, who—incidentally—died 28 years ago.

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December 10 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Vatican has a program of events planned to commemorate the occasion, including a meeting dedicated to reflection and thought and a public concert. Upon the announcement of these events, Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace stated:

The Church holds that human rights express the transcendent dignity of human beings, the only creatures to be loved by God for themselves, the end and never the means; and she believes that the 1948 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was a moment of fundamental importance in mankind's development of a moral conscience that accords with human dignity.

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