On 21 October 1866, the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore came to an end. It had begun on the 7th of October and was presided over by Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore. Present at the council were seven archbishops, thirty-nine bishops or their procurators, two abbots and President of the United States Andrew Johnson. It was designed to show the unity of the Catholic faith in the United States after the Civil War which saw Catholics fighting on both sides.

Among the decrees of the council were condemnations against religious indifferentism and the “abuse of magnetism” for “superstitious and illicit purposes” such as attempting to fortell the future. The council also called for regular provincial councils, for bishops to regularly visit their parishes and for priests to fully explain the doctrine of the Church to the faithful.

On 3 October 1992, while appearing on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest and singing a version of Bob Marley’s “War”, Sinéad O’Connor tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while saying “Fight the real enemy” and threw the pieces of the picture toward the camera. She intended her action as a sign of protest against the problem of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Saturday Night Live was not aware of O’Connor’s plan and continues to decline to rebroadcast the O’Connor’s protest with a few exceptions.

The audience reacted with amazement and NBC received 4,484 angry complaints. Frank Sinatra said he wanted to punch O’Connor “right in the mouth”. NBC was fined $2.5 million by the FCC. When O’Connor returned to the US to perform a concert for Bob Dylan, she was greeted with boos and would later permanently retire from the “pop” entertainment industry.

On 22 September 1997, in an interview with the Italian weekly newspaper Vita, O’Connor asked Pope John Paul II to forgive her, claiming that what she had done was “a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel.” However in 2002, Sinéad said that she wouldn’t have changed anything about what she had done. She has left the Catholic Church to join the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church.

On 30 September 1925, Dr. Anna Dengel, Dr. Johanna Lyons, Evelyn Flieger, RN and Marie Ulbrich, R.N. the “First Four” founded the Medical Mission Sisters in Washington DC. The women were not yet professed sisters because the Catholic Church did not yet approve of sisters working in health care, that would not take place until 1935. Still, they lived as a community and grew as they worked to serve in the field of medicine and other related areas.

The Medical Mission Sisters was the inspiration of Dr. Anna Dengel who wanted to begin a religious community to meet the needs of the poor, who were “to live for God…to dedicate themselves to the service of the sick for the love of God and …to be properly trained according to the knowledge and standards of the time in order to practice medicine in its fill scope, to which the Sisters were to dedicate their lives.”

They will be the first Roman Catholic Congregation to provide surgeons and obstetricians for missionary work.

There is an earlier CUTH podcast on Anna Dengel