Blogging Around: Informative Edition

What Many Catholics Don't Know About Divorce and Receiving Communion

I was as surprised as Deacon Greg to find that many people don't know this basic fact:

Let me state this plainly: if you are divorced but have not remarried, and have no mortal sins to confess, you can receive communion. Simply being divorced does not bar you from the Eucharist.

He's got more but that's the gist. The very important gist.

Braving Ebola

Via GetReligion comes this pointer to an excellent NYTimes photo essay of those who labor and those who survived at an Ebola treatment center in rural Liberia. Informative. Inspirational. Humbling.

The Kenyan Bishops Expose WHO and Unicef

From Pia de Solanni:

... the Bishops of Kenya issued what appeared to be a courageous statement exposing a clandestine population control program disguised as a tetanus vaccine program.

I hadn't heard of this until now and, like Pia, feel it goes hand-in-hand with the much better publicized story of the 11 women who died after being paid to undergo sterilization in India. Do go read Pia's posts because she has some good points about what this says about how women are viewed in many cultures and the value of NFP (Natural Family Planning) whose high success rates seem to be a well kept secret.

"Blue Bloods" Runs Cold on Church's Treatment of Homosexuals

I'm not a Blue Bloods fan myself, but I know a lot of Catholics who appreciate their relatively positive portrayal of Catholicism on the show. It seems that they decided to get "edgy" and take on the Church's stance on homosexuals. I can't speak to this, as I say, since I don't watch. This piece on the episode is worth reading because not only is the author a regular viewer but also represents the Church's teachings well when discussing the episode. (Thanks to regular commenter Mack Hall for the heads up on this one.)

But in “Burning Bridges,” the episode that aired Oct. 10, Goldberg and Co. decided to mount a full, frontal assault on the Church and her teaching on homosexuality. But it was an anemic one, as my anger ultimately gave way to amusement: It was evident that the producers and script writer were too afraid to give the Church real equal time in addressing the controversy.