02:33 pm  |  ROME, ITALY, Jul 3, 2009 (CNA).- Fr. Maurizio Faggioni, OFM, a professor at the top pontifical institute for moral theology, the Pontifical Academy “Alphonsianum,” said in a recent interview with Catholic News Agency that the teachings of the Church suggest “far more prudence” in approaching some of the issues raised by Christopher West in his presentation of the Theology of the Body.

Faggioni, a Franciscan who teaches at the Alphonsianum, an academy named upon the father of modern Moral theology, St. Alphonsus of Liguori, is one of the most consulted moral theologians and is an advisor to several Vatican dicasteries.

In a conversation with CNA, Fr. Faggioni explained that some of the issues discussed publicly by West, such as the appropriateness of anal sex or other forms of sexual “foreplay” in married relationships, have to be dealt with using great care, since “the risk is of displacing the attention from marital love and the anthropologic meaning of lovely gestures to merely the genital aspects.”

12:00 pm  |  WICHITA, KAN., Jul 3, 2009 (CNA).- Considering the beatification of the Servant of God Fr. Emil Kapaun, a Vatican investigation has found enough evidence of a miracle in the unexplained recovery of a young man who broke his skull in a near-fatal athletic accident. The man’s mother and her family had prayed for the intercession of the heroic U.S. Army chaplain.

Andrea Ambrosi, a lawyer and investigator for the Vatican, on Friday visited family members and the doctors of two Wichita-area families who believe the survival of their children during near-lethal medical crises should qualify as miracles.

One meeting involved Chase Kear, a 20-year-old athlete from Colwich severely injured in an October pole-vaulting accident, the Wichita Eagle reports.

06:53 am  |  ANNAPOLIS, MD., Jul 3, 2009 (CNA).- An Annapolis woman whose cancer disappeared without explanation has become the focus of canonization efforts for a priest who was once a pastor in her diocese.

Mary Ellen Heibel, 71, was miraculously cured of terminal cancer after praying to Blessed Fr. Francis Seelos, a 19th century Redemptorist priest who had once served in the Annapolis, Maryland area.

“I was first diagnosed with esophageal cancer on January 6, 2003,” Heibel told CNA, “and it was all gone on February 8, 2005.”

08:17 pm  |  WASHINGTON D.C., Jul 2, 2009 (CNA).- Pro-lifers and defenders of marriage reacted critically on Tuesday to an Obama administration proposal to use taxpayer funds for abortions in the District of Columbia and to a federal court's denial of a referendum involving same-sex “marriage.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia and chair of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a Tuesday letter that no one can support funding abortions in the nation’s capital and still claim to support reducing abortions.

“The evidence is overwhelming, and universally recognized by groups on all sides of the abortion issue, that the availability of public funds for abortion greatly increases abortions,” he wrote.