"May a lesbian marry a gay man?" he told the crowd. "My answer is 'yes,' because in that instance the capacity to consummate the union is there. The anatomy is there. The possibility of conception is there." Apparently in Cruz's mind, "consummation" is limited strictly to those activities which can result in conception, and conception is good enough to call it a marriage. Cruz went on to to discuss marriage equality, saying, "For the Church, even if you turn it upside down and call it by another name, it would still not be marriage. For the Church, even if a hundred [judges] bless a same-sex wedding, it would still not be effective." Who needs love or even a like-minded orientation to get the Church's blessing anyway, when you've got straight up anatomy?

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No, the new pontiff will not personally be directing you around his old stomping grounds in Buenos Aires, but you can walk where he once walked, sit where he once sat, oppose gay rights where he once opposed gay rights, undermine women's access to basic health care where he once undermined women's access to basic health care, etc ad infinitum, as the Associated Press reports:

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What makes Jesus so hip? Well, for one thing, he was a carpenter, and craftsmanship is big in Brooklyn right now. And, Jesus once turned water into wine, which is very do-it-yourself and kind of locavore-ish, if you think about it. Also: A bearded long-hair. And, per this ad, a Converse-wearer.

h/t Bucky Turco/ANIMALNewYork

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Like Pope Emeritus Benedict, Francis believes that the nuns focus too much on serving their communities around issues of health care and economic justice and too little on gay people and abortion. In a report issued by the Vatican under Benedict's leadership, the Holy See accused the group of undermining "issues of crucial importance to the life of Church and society, such as the Church’s Biblical view of family life and human sexuality" and promoting a "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

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As Father Peter Mussett, pastor of the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told Tracy Connor at NBC News: "I had five people in a week who were saying, 'Pope Francis has inspired me to return to my faith. It's pretty remarkable."

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For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: ‘I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches. In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one’s integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.

Another figure in the city's Catholic leadership, Sacred Heart Major Seminary canon law professor and Vatican legal counsel Edward Peters, shares Vigneron's views. In a blog post on the Catholic Church and same-sex marriage, Peters wrote:

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After years of operating on campus without incident, the group, Boston College Students for Sexual Health, received a letter in March from the administration, ordering them to stop giving out free condoms and sexual health education kits to students.

According to The New York Times, the letter explained that "the distribution of condoms is not congruent" with the values and traditions of Boston College:

While we understand that you may not be intentionally violating university policy, we do need to advise you that, should we receive any reports that you are, in fact, distributing condoms on campus, the matter would be referred to the student conduct office for disciplinary action by the university.

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Nicholas Coppola has been teaching religious education classes and visiting with home-bound members of his church for close to a decade, but was banned from continuing to serve his church community after St. Anthony's received an anonymous letter complaining about his sexuality.

As reported by the Huffington Post:

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Coppola said he attended a mass at St. Anthony's celebrating justice and equality. After the homily, he was summoned into the office of his pastor, Father Nicholas Lombardi, where he was told an anonymous letter complaining about his sexuality had been sent to Bishop William Murphy of the Rockville Centre Diocese, which includes St. Anthony's Parish. Lombardi said Coppola would be banned from his parish duties as a result of the letter.

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From the Hollywood Reporter:

Life rights have been acquired to the Boston Globe's "Spotlight Team" of reporters and editors, including then-Globe editor Marty Baron, special projects editor Ben Bradlee Jr., Spotlight Team editor Walter "Robby" Robinson and reporters Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Matt Carroll.

The team spent a year interviewing victims and reviewing thousands of pages of documents and discovered years of cover-up by Church leadership. Their reporting eventually led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, who had hidden years of serial abuse by other priests and opened the floodgates to other revelations of molestation and cover-ups around the world that still reverberate today.

Tom McCarthy will direct and co-write the script with Josh Singer, THR reports. Boston Magazine already has some casting suggestions for the Globe reporters.

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The pontiff, the first from Latin America, delivered the speech in Italian, emphasizing that Italian is the language of the Holy See. The full text of the speech has been translated by the Vatican and released to the AP, below:
___

Dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, Happy Easter! Happy Easter!

What a joy it is for me to announce this message: Christ is risen! I would like it to go out to every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons.

Most of all, I would like it to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this Good News: Jesus is risen, there is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil! Love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious! The mercy of God always triumphs!

We too, like the women who were Jesus' disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom. The love God can do this!

This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell - to the abyss of separation from God - this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus, has transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.

This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness. Because God is life, life alone, and we are his glory: the living man (cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4,20,5-7).

Dear brothers and sisters, Christ died and rose once for all, and for everyone, but the power of the Resurrection, this passover from slavery to evil to the freedom of goodness, must be accomplished in every age, in our concrete existence, in our everyday lives. How many deserts, even today, do human beings need to cross! Above all, the desert within, when we have no love for God or neighbour, when we fail to realize that we are guardians of all that the Creator has given us and continues to give us. God's mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, can restore life to dry bones (cf. Ez 37:1-14).

So this is the invitation which I address to everyone: Let us accept the grace of Christ's Resurrection! Let us be renewed by God's mercy, let us be loved by Jesus, let us enable the power of his love to transform our lives too; and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.

And so we ask the risen Jesus, who turns death into life, to change hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness, war into peace. Yes, Christ is our peace, and through him we implore peace for all the world.

Peace for the Middle East, and particularly between Israelis and Palestinians, who struggle to find the road of agreement, that they may willingly and courageously resume negotiations to end a conflict that has lasted all too long. Peace in Iraq, that every act of violence may end, and above all for dear Syria, for its people torn by conflict and for the many refugees who await help and comfort. How much blood has been shed! And how much suffering must there still be before a political solution to the crisis will be found?

Peace for Africa, still the scene of violent conflicts. In Mali, may unity and stability be restored; in Nigeria, where attacks sadly continue, gravely threatening the lives of many innocent people, and where great numbers of persons, including children, are held hostage by terrorist groups. Peace in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in the Central African Republic, where many have been forced to leave their homes and continue to live in fear.

Peace in Asia, above all on the Korean peninsula: may disagreements be overcome and a renewed spirit of reconciliation grow.

Peace in the whole world, still divided by greed looking for easy gain, wounded by the selfishness which threatens human life and the family, selfishness that continues in human trafficking, the most extensive form of slavery in this twenty-first century; human trafficking is the most extensive form of slavery in this twenty-first century! Peace to the whole world, torn apart by violence linked to drug trafficking and by the iniquitous exploitation of natural resources! Peace to this our Earth! Made the risen Jesus bring comfort to the victims of natural disasters and make us responsible guardians of creation.

Dear brothers and sisters, to all of you who are listening to me, from Rome and from all over of the world, I address the invitation of the Psalm: "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever. Let Israel say: 'His steadfast love endures for ever'" (Ps 117:1-2).

Greeting

Dear Brothers and Sisters, to you who have come from all over the world to this Square at the heart of Christianity, and to you linked by modern technology, I repeat my greeting: Happy Easter!

Bear in your families and in your countries the message of joy, hope and peace which every year, on this day, is powerfully renewed.

May the risen Lord, the conqueror of sin and death, be a support to you all, especially to the weakest and neediest. Thank you for your presence and for the witness of your faith. A thought and a special thank-you for the beautiful flowers, which come from the Netherlands. To all of you I affectionately say again: may the risen Christ guide all of you and the whole of humanity on the paths of justice, love and peace.

__

Copyright Vatican Publishing House

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This may be the right strategy — if you have a shot at the papacy. But if you are trying to secure a spot in the American business world, new research suggests that priming your powerful side is the way to go. A sense of power, it seems, increases your appeal both on paper and in person to those making hiring decisions.

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Raised without religion, they are flummoxed by the practices and customs that accompany a Catholic ritual. Though he himself left the church as a teenager in the 1960s, he’s ambivalent about the loss of a binding and, at times, beautiful religious culture.

“People are rejecting something they don’t even remember,” said O’Doherty, whose 2008 book "Empty Pulpits: Ireland’s Retreat from Religion" chronicled the impact of secularization on Ireland. “We may have only a sterile, secular culture that looks at the Catholic Church as an army of priests raping children.”

As Pope Francis takes over the global church, O’Doherty, like many church-watchers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, ascribe the religion’s current troubles to secularization. In 1946, Pope Paul VI called Ireland “the most Catholic country,” but starting in the mid-1960s, a growing number of the Irish — like many in Western Europe and the United States — began questioning the authority of religious institutions. Today, the percentage of Irish practitioners remains high compared with most of the rest of Europe.

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It’s going to be very tempting to forget this fact over the next few days. The pundits, Catholic and otherwise, have been rapt in the suspense of awaiting the arrival of Pope Francis. We heard a lot of impossible hopes for who the next pope would be, along with the less thrilling reality of the actual candidates. But Catholics, along with the masses who have been suddenly and momentarily interested in Catholic affairs, should remember that the papacy is not to be confused with the church itself. At no time should this have been more clear than those strange and special few days when the Catholic Church was a people—an assembly, a community, a mystical body—without a pope.

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Mortensen’s non-plan looks a lot like a plan to me, although maybe not an entirely conscious one. He has used the worldwide fame he earned for playing Aragorn (son of Arathorn) in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to declare his independence from the celebrity economy and follow his own idiosyncratic career path, which has included painting, poetry, music and three films with David Cronenberg, including an Oscar-nominated turn as a brutal Ukrainian mobster in “Eastern Promises.”

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But the church is not just the hierarchy, and as the spectacle of the last several days has demonstrated, there are millions or billions of people around the world -- Catholics and non-Catholics alike -- who wish the newly elected Pope Francis well and yearn to see in him the possibility of hope and renewal for this ancient, powerful and heavily tarnished institution that claims direct succession from the apostles of Jesus. As the first Latin American pope and the first Jesuit pope, Francis represents a break with tradition in several ways. Both the name he has chosen and his personal modesty and humility are meant to recall St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most adored figures in the Christian tradition, and no doubt also St. Francis de Sales, a 17th-century mystic, author and ascetic known for his devotion to the poor.

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LIMA, Peru — The Vatican is hitting back at critics who have charged that Pope Francis didn't do enough during Argentina's Dirty War.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi called the accusations "defamatory" and told reporters today that they "must be clearly and firmly denied."

Critics of Jorge Bergoglio, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, allege he failed to protect priests who challenged Argentina's military dictatorship during the its Dirty War from 1976-1983.

They also claim he's said too little about the complicity of the church during that time, according to Reuters.

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Well, we have a pope. After almost two weeks of speculation, prediction, even handicapping, the first non-European pope in over a thousand years, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, stepped out on the Vatican loggia at 8:22 Central European Time today to be introduced to the world.

In some respects, the election of Cardinal Bergoglio is a very promising sign. As an archbishop from the most populous Catholic continent on earth, Latin America, the new Pope Francis I symbolizes a shift that has been a very long time coming, from Euro-centrism to the church of the Global South. And his reputation as an advocate for the poor, emphasizing the Christian Gospel of love, washing the feet of AIDS victims, and more.

The new pope’s legacy will stand him in good stead as well, since his parents were Italians, and he speaks Italian fluently—not a bad thing for a pope—even as he has never served in the Vatican curia, the focus of much criticism and concern in recent months. He is also the first Jesuit pope in history. Being a member of the largest religious order in the church certainly can’t hurt.

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If you'd been holding your breath hoping for a fresh new bro pope, a younger dude with a marginally less offensive attitude toward some of the most deeply controversial and divisive issues among Catholics today, your ship did not come in on Wednesday. The 76-year-old Argentine Bergoglio, the first pope to hail from the Americas, has reportedly called same-sex marriage "a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God." So that'd be a no. He's not down with abortion under any circumstances, which he says contributes to a "culture of death," and has publicly clashed with Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over the country's plan to distribute free birth control. But according to a report in the Guardian, he is, however, open to contraception as a form of preventing disease. And though he's firmly denied it, he's been accused of complicity in a 1976 kidnapping of two priests during the country's military regime.

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Cardinals voted twice Wednesday morning in the Vatican's famed frescoed chapel following their inaugural vote Tuesday to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, who stunned the Catholic world last month by becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign.

The cardinals break for lunch at the Vatican hotel and return for another two rounds of voting Wednesday afternoon.

The drama - with stage sets by Michelangelo and an outcome that is anyone's guess - is playing out against the backdrop of the turmoil unleashed by Benedict's surprise retirement and the exposure of deep divisions among cardinals that ensued. They must find a pope who can both clean up a corrupt Vatican bureaucracy as well as a pastor who can revive Catholicism in a time of growing secularism.

The divisions and the difficulty in finding both attributes in one man, many analysts say, mean that the world should brace for a long conclave - or at least one longer than the four ballots it took to elect Benedict in 2005.

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