The following personal observations are frequently based upon specific articles that have appeared in the cyber-news bulletins reported at www.zenit.org: "The World From Rome"..  Where this is the case, I will list the specific publication date that applies.  Please see also my other 20 offerings under the above rubric, particularly #17. 

• The Catholic Church's Relationship with Judaism and Israel.  (See Zenit, Jan. 17 and 20, 2010).  It appears to me that the Church continues to be too circumspect in these relations.  Catholics consider the Hebrew Religion as our Faith Brotherhood.  But that should not prevent us from advancing our rightful claims in the Holy Land and in Jerusalem on behalf of Christians everywhere, including Palestinians.  
• Similarly, The Church's dealings with Islam, and whoever is representing that polyglot, is also too much of a Kabuki Dance.  The Catholic Church is the one international organization with the influence to engage that dangerous issue. 
  
• On the issue of priests and their prohibition to marry,  the Church can be practical when it sees a need.  See Zenit, Jan. 18, 2010: "The communique stated that 'following the changes of 1989, the Eastern Catholic Churches of Cebntral and Eastern Europe have had the joy of being able to ordain numerous young priests, including married ones, in keeping with the ancient tradition of their Churches.'"  The problem is that the Church fails to see the real need facing it to revisit this question, manifested in part by the continuing clergy sex abuse scandals - now reaching ever closer to the Vatican. 
  
• There is no lack of challenges to Church teachings in Bioethics.  See Zenit, Feb. 14, 2010: "Pontiff: Bioethics Needs Natural Law". See also the very disturbing article in the NYTimes entitled "Building a Baby, With Few Ground Rules", by Stephanie Saul, (Sunday Dec. 13, 2009, pA1).  But here also, the Church paints everything with the same broad brush unnecessarily: the absolute position on abortion with issues of contraception even between a committed married couple, and with issues of in vitro fertilization within the same committed couple.  Yes, frozen excess embryos is a vexing problem; but is wasting them the answer?  Or as expressed in a letter to Zenit on this subject by a reader: "I do not see how embryo adoption and giving a child a womb to grow in is so terribly different from adopting a child and giving it a home to live in.  It is an act of tremendous generosity and charity". (Zenit, Feb. 27, 2010).  Or is the decision by a Bishop in Florida to bar children of committed gay or lesbian couples from attending Catholic Schools consistent with the spirit and meaning of "the best interests of the child"? 
  
• The Church is right to take to task the recent Copenhagen Climate Summit as a possible return to Malthusian population control, precisely at a time when a strong case is made that the current low birth rates throughout the world will make economic progress and reduction in poverty an impossibility. (See Zenit, Dec. 13, 2009). 
  
• The Church is right in its position regarding the current Health Care Reform Bills under consideration.  No Federal funding for abortion can be allowed, wiether directly or by slight of hand. 
  
• The Church is right in its continuing efforts to promote a comprehensive Immigration Policy.  
• Finally, for now, the Pope is right in his recent statement that "...there is a need to change mentalities, so as to see laypeople as co-responsible for the Church, not merely as collaborators of the clergy".  (See Zenit, March 7, 2010) Right On, as discussed in some of the earlier "Whats Wrong..." articles already offered in this section. 

So, we continue with messages of mixed benefit from the Magisterium.  Our Church leaders should meditate on the many times the Church has been wrong in the last 2,000 years - sometimes terribly wrong - and THINK rather than reflexly react.

GS