Phyllis Zagano
Phyllis Zagano is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Phyllis Zagano
Pope Francis wants every Catholic to have a say. Why haven’t US Catholics heard about it?
By Phyllis Zagano — September 22, 2021
(RNS) — The nation’s bishops don’t seem to care.
COMMENTARY: Nature vs. nurture
By Phyllis Zagano — September 29, 2010
(RNS) I was always told that you’re not supposed to discuss religion or politics in polite company. That was before gay marriage became the item du jour. Polls indicate a little more than half of Americans favor legal protections for same-sex couples. Gay marriage is another story; 44 percent of Americans support it, while 53 […]
COMMENTARY: It will take more than Muslims to rehab Ground Zero
By Phyllis Zagano — September 15, 2010
EW YORK (RNS) Andrew Kelly was driving drunk the night his Jeep hit Vionique Valnord-Kassime in Brooklyn about a year ago. She was trying to hail a cab. He was speeding by. She died. He lived. The details are horrifyingly similar to the sad tales repeated every day in other places. In this case, a […]
COMMENTARY: Real educators teach students how—not what—to think
By Phyllis Zagano — September 1, 2010
(RNS) Last spring, two knock-down, drag-out academic fights made the news. At the University of Illinois, a part-time religion professor lost his job for presenting Catholic teaching on homosexuality. At Catholic Seton Hall University in New Jersey, a tenured political science professor raised hackles for proposing a course on gay marriage. The end of the […]
COMMENTARY: New York’s anti-religious pandemic
By Phyllis Zagano — August 18, 2010
NEW YORK (RNS) Who could be against Mother Teresa? It’s a good question, and one that New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan asked after the Empire State Building refused to light its spire in Teresa’s signature blue and white to honor the 100th anniversary of her birth on Aug. 26. Mother Teresa, as we all know, […]
COMMENTARY: For the Bible tells me so
By Phyllis Zagano — August 4, 2010
(RNS) Mid-summer Manhattan is a sticky sultry town — lazy in a way unlike, say, October, when cool breezes chase visiting diplomats up and down the avenues. New York in July is, well, beastly, and no one wants to be there. But we were all there on a recent morning, at the Church of St. […]
COMMENTARY: From annoying to absurd to downright dangerous
By Phyllis Zagano — July 21, 2010
(RNS) The Catholic story du jour is that ordaining a woman is equal to priestly pederasty. Lots of folks are wondering what, exactly, they’re smoking in the Vatican. How could they say something like that? The short answer is the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asserted its authority over perpetrators of various […]
COMMENTARY: The Gray Lady vs. the Catholic Church
By Phyllis Zagano — July 8, 2010
(RNS) More than once in the past few months, The New York Times has lifted up a corner of the Catholic carpet and found all sorts of nasty things scurrying about. In its coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, the Gray Lady has zeroed in on Pope Benedict XVI’s role in processing abuse claims, […]
COMMENTARY: We’re all in this together
By Phyllis Zagano — June 23, 2010
(RNS) Pope Benedict XVI could not have predicted the heartbreak in the Gulf of Mexico when he wrote his World Day of Peace Message for 2010, “If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation.” Still, his words now hit home in the combined mistakes and insensitivity of mega-corporation British Petroleum and the disaster unfolding in […]
COMMENTARY: Happy Fathers Day to the men in black
By Phyllis Zagano — June 9, 2010
(RNS) Wouldn’t you love to have Pope Benedict XVI over for a barbeque on Father’s Day, if for no other reason than to give him an afternoon off? I mean, the man barely gets up in the morning and there’s another scandal on his doorstep. He takes vacations, but there’s not one on his calendar […]
COMMENTARY: Tossing the women overboard
By Phyllis Zagano — May 26, 2010
(RNS) If you think the Catholic soap opera will go off the air soon, think again. We may be watching another Reformation at work — except this time, the Catholics who don’t walk away are getting excommunicated. Some date the Reformation to Martin Luther’s 1510 trip to Rome. The Catholic Church was raising funds to […]
COMMENTARY: Let the women help Benedict tidy up the mess
By Phyllis Zagano — May 12, 2010
(RNS) Unless Pope Benedict XVI does something fast, his pontificate will remain forever smeared by the muddy rolling sex scandal that has turned Catholic news into an international soap opera. Here’s my two-pronged solution: Remove cover-up bishops, and restore women to ordained church service. First, however, Benedict has to remove Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the 82-year-old […]
COMMENTARY: Happy Mothers Day
By Phyllis Zagano — April 28, 2010
(RNS) Just when you think you’ve heard it all, another weird notion comes down the pike. Now scientists at England’s Newcastle University say they have grown human embryos from three parents. It’s called “Pronuclear transfer in human embryos to prevent transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease” — at least that’s the title of the 12-author paper […]
COMMENTARY: Deny, deny, deny
By Phyllis Zagano — April 14, 2010
(RNS) The first public statement by a pope was a denial. When things were going well, St. Peter was right there at Jesus’ side. But once things went south, Peter denied him. Not just once. Three times. Today, the Catholic hierarchy seems to be in group denial about the international implications of the ongoing clergy […]
COMMENTARY: Women need not apply, but should
By Phyllis Zagano — April 1, 2010
(RNS) Another day, another scandal. Maybe Catholics should hire a few nuns to investigate the Vatican. It’s about time some women entered church decision-making. Otherwise, this mess is not going to end. Ours is not the first era when the church has been in a terrible state. The lack of women with personal or professional […]
