1. Reader Question: Fast Not as the Hypocrites Do
March 2010 led off with a popular Reader Question: Is it wrong to tell others about what you're giving up for Lent?
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2. Reader Question: Lent, Fasting, and the Bible
"Where in the Bible does it state that meat is forbidden on Fridays during Lent?" That's the question reader Meredith asked, most likely not knowing how many other questions it implied.
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- Do You Have a Question About Catholicism?
- Fasting: A Powerful Spiritual Tool
- Abstinence as Spiritual Discipline
- Scriptural Reading for the Thursday of the Third Week of Lent
- Easter 101
- What Are the Rules for Fasting and Abstinence in the Catholic Church?
- Novus Ordo
- The Latin Mass
- What Is Septuagesima Sunday?
- What Is Sexagesima Sunday?
- What Is Quinquagesima Sunday?
- Ash Wednesday in the Catholic Church
- Good Friday
- Reader Question: Observing Lent Before Vatican II
3. Brief Dispatches From the War on Life
Three stories, one theme: From Barack Obama's healthcare plan, to a murdered pro-life activist, to peaceful protesters against abortion—all three stories illustrated one aspect of almost 40 years of legalized abortion in the United States.
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4. Reader Question: Saint Joseph's Day and Abstinence
In 2010, Saint Joseph's Day fell on a Friday in Lent, and many Catholics were surprised to find that they were dispensed from the normal Friday abstinence from meat. Do you know why?
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- Do You Have a Question About Catholicism?
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- Easter in the Catholic Church
- Pentecost Sunday
- Christmas
- Trinity Sunday
- Reader Question: Should We Fast on Sundays?
- The Annunciation of the Lord
5. Nancy Pelosi Invokes Saint Joseph on Healthcare
Two days before the vote on President Obama's healthcare bill, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held a press conference in which she called for a little divine intervention to aid the Democrats in passing it. But Speaker Pelosi inadvertently revealed a bit about the shallowness of her own Catholic education.
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6. Clergy Sexual Abuse: Separating Fact, Fiction, and Anti-Catholic Bias
March 2010 ended with a series of news reports on sexual abuse by Catholic priests—just in time for Easter. Drawing on almost a decade of reporting on the sexual-abuse scandal, I began a series of articles examining specific cases and the media's all-too-frequent misrepresentation of the facts.
7. The Pope and Fr. Murphy: Fact, Fiction, and Anti-Catholic Bias
"Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys" read the headline on the front page of the New York Times on March 25, 2010—the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. The text of the story was no less alarming, seeming to implicate "Top Vatican officials—including the future Pope Benedict XVI" in a decades-long cover-up of one of the most heinous cases of clerical sexual abuse revealed in the United States.
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