In the May 15 Catholic Telegraph

What parents need to know about 'sexting'

Local Catholic high schools and colleges prepare for graduation

An alleged local miracle boosts the cause of Blessed Frances Schervier

Pope Benedict XVI travels to the Holy Land, and the visit already has its controversies

The Catholic world

MIAMI (CNS) -- The Miami priest suspended from his parish and Catholic radio posts after photos of him with a woman on the beach were released by a tabloid magazine said he has had a ro-mantic relationship with the woman for about two years and is in love with her. Father Alberto Cutie, who had been administrator of St. Francis de Sales Parish in Miami Beach and general director and president of Pax Catholic Communications, spoke about the un-named woman in a May 11 interview with "The Early Show" on CBS television. The photos of the Cuban-American priest -- dubbed "Father Oprah" because of the advice he gives to couples on Spanish radio and television -- were published in the Spanish-language magazine TVNotas May 5. Father Cutie opened the "Early Show" interview with apologies to the Catholic community, Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora and his fellow priests for his actions, which he called "imprudent" and "stupid." "I don't support the breaking of the celi-bacy promise," he said. "I understand fully that this is wrong."

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) -- The new executive director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference wants to make the organization live up more closely to the "national" part of its name. Jim Ennis said the organization seemed to tilt more to an international per-spective in recent years, but wants to build up domestic rural networking opportunities to be at least as strong. And, from another point of view, "my perception of Catholic Rural Life is that it's a Midwestern organization," said Ennis, using a popular shorthand term for the organization during an April 23 interview with Catholic News Service. He said his goal is to broaden familiarity with the rural life conference so that people across the country, "even Hawaii," will want to join. He grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California, where, he said, the conference was not exactly a household word in his form-ative years. Ennis, who had been director for a St. Paul-based affiliate of the national Food Alliance organization, started his second year as head of the conference in April.

SAN ANTONIO (CNS) -- A "lingering clericalism that distracts and discourages laity in their God-given calling to serve" and the presence of ideological extremes can hinder parishes' efforts to evangelize, said a speaker at the national meeting of the National Federation of Priests' Councils. Jesuit Father Allan Figueroa Deck, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, delivered a keynote talk at the April 27-30 meeting in San An-tonio. The theme was "The Parish of Tomorrow -- Today." Other speakers included Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles; Oblate Father Ron Rol-heiser, president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio; and Kerry Robinson, executive director of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management in Washington. In his April 29 talk, Father Deck said that, although the U.S. church "has become as much an immigrant church today as it was a hundred years ago," U.S. Catholics today are characterized by a "wild diver-sity." But, he added, "the key to a suc-cessful parish is precisely what it always was: creating the conditions whereby many diverse groups experience a real sense of belonging."

Obama proposal seen as beginning of end for school voucher program

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- President Barack Obama's May 6 budget proposal to allow 1,700 poor children in the District of Columbia to keep their federally funded scholarships but

bar any more students from entering the program means a slow death for an initiative that works, said a Washington archdiocesan official. "This proposal might help children who are now in the program," said Patricia Weitzel-O'Neill, superintendent for schools. "But what about the many other children in the city who will never have this opportunity?" She was referring to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally funded voucher program launched as a pilot program five years ago that has to be reauthorized by Congress. It allocates $14 million annually in individual scholarships of up to $7,500 to 1,700 children from low-income families, which allows them to attend private schools in the District of Columbia. About half of the scholarship recipients attend Catholic schools. The announcement of the president's proposal came the same day that nearly 2,000 students, parents and other community members converged on Freedom Plaza in Washington for a rally to urge elected officials to keep the program intact.

Website of the week

In honor or Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land this week, here's a website of interest: www.hebrewcatholic.org is the site of the Association of Hebrew Catholics, an organization designed to preserve the identity and heritage of Catholics of Jewish origin within the church.