The ceiling of St. Joseph Church, which is slated to merge with the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Parish in the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey (Wikimedia Commons/Bestbudbrian)
by Peter Feuerherd
Editor's note: The Field Hospital blog shares parish and other grassroots efforts across the U.S. and Canada to accompany those on the margins and in need. Pope Francis said he sees the church as a "field hospital" that labors "from the ground up" to "heal wounds."
Cardinal Joseph Tobin welcomes a group of gay and lesbian Catholics to Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey. The hospitality generates a reflection on the changing landscape of Catholic/LGBT relations.
But maybe things aren't changing so much after all: Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, decrees that those in same-sex marriages cannot receive Communion or a Catholic funeral in his diocese.
Parishioners in Lake Forest, California, march 52 miles to the cathedral in Los Angeles in support of immigrant rights.
The Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska, looks at consolidating rural parishes. Meanwhile, six parishes in the city of Camden, New Jersey, will be combined into three.
Priests and church workers in the Montreal Archdiocese will now be required to be fingerprinted, with the aim of abuse prevention.
A retiring pastor in Buffalo, New York, found that keeping his homilies short and to the point made them effective. His parishioners agree.
[Peter Feuerherd is a correspondent for NCR's Field Hospital series on parish life and is a professor of journalism at St. John's University, New York.]
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