CatholicAnchor.org For the fifth straight year, a group of Catholic men, joined by several priests, will don heavy backpacks and head into an Alaska mountain range. The three-day trek, beginning on Sunday, July 13 and concluding on Tuesday, July 15, is known as the “Fathers’ Hike.” The informal adventure is a chance for men to…
CatholicAnchor.org Regardless of what we believe about sexual morality, those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender must be treated with the dignity and compassion due them as members of the human family. This is without exception and justice demands it. This means we need to speak up for them during family dinners…
CatholicAnchor.org Gov. Sean Parnell signed legislation April 17 to prohibit Alaska abortion practitioners from being reimbursed by the state for performing so called “elective” abortions that are not necessary to preserve the life or physical health of the mother. The legislation underwent a series of contentious hearings before final passage and it failed to draw…
CatholicAnchor.org Earlier this year, Father Michael Shields received an invitation to give an eight-day retreat in Rome for nuns of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity congregation. He had no idea that the invite would land him face to face with Pope Francis, in the pontiff’s private chapel. Since the early 1990s Father Shields has served…
A leading voice of the Catholic Church sees Alaska as where the rest of the U.S. church may be heading in the future. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, stopped in Anchorage March 24-26 to spend three days teaching, celebrating liturgies and inspiring Alaskan clergy during the annual priest convocation. During his visit, he…
In 1998, Alaska became the first state in the union to amend its constitution and define marriage as between one man and one woman, and despite a trend among more than a dozen states to legally recognize same-sex marriage, Alaska will hold the line. Alaska Attorney General Michael Geraghty recently told the Associated Press that…
Orthodox Christians from parishes and villages across Alaska gathered at St. Innocent Cathedral in Sitka for the Feb. 21 consecration of Bishop David Mahaffey as the new Orthodox bishop for the Diocese of Sitka and all Alaska. More than 40 priests and deacons were on hand, along with four bishops from the Orthodox Church in…
Much has been said of Pope Francis since being elected to the papacy a year ago. But headlines, sound bites and endless “pontifications” about the pontiff tend to drown out his transformative challenge to the faithful.
Democratic Minority Leader Hollis French, of Anchorage, has introduced a resolution in the Alaska State Legislature to repeal the state’s voter approved constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of “one man and one woman.” French is proposing a constitutional amendment to override the 1998 law which passed with 68 percent voter support. French called…
State Supreme Court hears challenge from Planned Parenthood The State of Alaska is defending a voter-approved law that requires at least one parent be notified before an abortion practitioner can perform an abortion on a minor girl. The law provides an option for a judge to bypass the notification requirement in special circumstances. Initially approved…