Catholic News Service Fires 21 Staff, Ends U.S. Operations

In a stunning announcement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) today, 21 employees of the USCCB / Catholic News Service will be laid off and Catholic News Service's U.S. offices will close.

Catholic News Service, founded in 1920, is the journalist arm of the USCCB, which employs a team of reporters for articles that appear in diocesan papers and websites. Only the Rome bureau of Catholic News Service will remain open.

This will likely be devastating to diocesan papers and websites, which rely heavily on Catholic News Service articles for national Church news. Many diocesan newspapers have already downgraded their frequency, from weekly to biweekly or even monthly, if not closing up altogether. And many papers are barely publishing, including the Catholic Standard of the Archdiocese of Washington, which is down to a sporadic monthly edition, but does not have a print edition listed since its March 17 issue. Without Catholic News Service articles to fill pages, already-skeletal local diocesan newsrooms will have to produce more copy.

New SoundCloud Page for Audio of Dr Kwasniewski’s Lectures and Interviews

For a number of years, readers have been asking me to make available video and audio files of my lectures and interviews. This is indeed something I have wanted to do, but there are two limitations: one is my technological ineptitude, and the other is the need for planning in advance to have recordings made at events, which doesn’t always happen. 

Nevertheless, over the past couple of years a good many such recordings have in fact been made, and I finally created a dedicated SoundCloud page on to which most of them have now been uploaded (and more will be added). Below I have listed the content currently available. I encourage you to explore and to recommend the site to others who appreciate audio content. All files are freely downloadable.

Matteo Salvini and ‘Famiglia Cristiana’. Marcello Veneziani: “The enemy is Pope Francis and his secularist policies.”

Libero

Quotidiano

July 25, 2018

The enemy of Christianity is not Matteo Salvini, as “Famiglia Cristiana” insinuates.

The enemy is inside the Church and it’s the secularist politics of Pope Francis. This, mixed with the Islamic invasion and atheistic materialism, is the great danger for our Western culture and for our world, so explains Marcello Veneziani in Il Tempo. 

Kudos to Brian McCall, new head of Catholic Family News

Heartfelt congratulations to Catholic Family News for choosing Brian McCall as its new Editor-in-Chief. The work of John Vennari will be continued in a faithful manner by a faithful Catholic and friend of Our Lord.

Full statement here.