It looks like May is also the perfect time for a local church to delve further into the subject of the family. Immaculate Conception Parish in Astoria, Queens is hosting an “American Family Film Festival.” The festival got underway a couple of weeks ago, and we were there.

The organization is the subject of an official inquiry by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, specifically the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth.

According to a letter sent by the committee chairman, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend to his fellow bishops, at issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive. Also up for review: assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups that promote stances which conflict with church teaching.

For their part, the Scouts, who have numerous parish-sponsored troops, deny many of the claims and defend their alliances.

For more on this, our Liz Faublas spoke with the Executive Director of National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, Robert McCarty.

– While some critics want the Girl Scouts of the USA to pull out of the world group, the scouts aren’t budging.

The Girl Scouts estimate that a quarter of their 2.3 million youth members are Catholic, and any significant exodus would be a blow given that membership already is down from a peak of more than 3 million several decades ago.

Among Argüllo‘s mighty works, a symphonic homage to Holocaust victims, titled “The Suffering of the Innocents.” The Orchestra of the Neocatechumenal Way recently performed the powerful piece at St. Joseph’s Church in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Washington Archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl is one of the major voices for the Church in the nation’s capital. He was recently in New York to receive the St. Catherine of Siena award for his contribution to Catholic health care. We had a chance to sit down with Cardinal Wuerl to talk about the state of health care in the U.S.

One man who opposed those efforts was Austria’s then-chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, who along with his wife, were eventually sent away to a concentration camp.

The son of Austria’s chancellor – also named Kurt von Schuschnigg –recounts the gripping events of that time, in a new book. He and wife Janet are the authors of “When Hitler Took Austria: A Memoir of Heroic Faith by the Chancellor’s Son.” Francesca Maximé recently had a chance to talk with Kurt and Janet.

Back in March, the group held a slumber party at the parish. There was food, film and, of course, faith. But there was also one important rule: no moms allowed!

That was certainly the case last week, when Time magazine featured on its cover a photo of a three-year-old boy latching on to his 26-year-old mother’s breast. And although breast-feeding is nothing out of the ordinary, this photo was not your typical image of that. The mother is standing up, the boy is standing on a chair and both of them are looking at the camera, and not at each other.

It certainly grabbed a lot of attention, but did it serves its intended purpose – to start a conversation on what is known as attachment parenting or did it go too far? Catholic journalist and author Mary DeTurris Poust thinks so. Writing on her blog, she says she was “stunned and disappointed and disgusted” to see what she called an “exploitive photo” on the cover of Time. I had a chance to talk more about this with Mary earlier today.

Here in the U.S., it is a much different story and faithful Chinese Catholics certainly know how to celebrate. Last week, they held their fourth procession for Our Lady of She-Shan. Back in China, the Basilica of Our Lady She-Shan was built in thanksgiving for Mary having saved Shanghai, where She-Shan Hill is located, from anti-Christian massacre. Here in the Brooklyn Diocese, the celebration took to the streets of Flushing.

The non-profit legal institute is representing two Catholic colleges, a Christian college and Catholic broadcaster EWTN, who are all suing either the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. At issue is the federal mandate requiring these organizations provide contraception, sterilization and some abortion inducing drugs in their employee health plans – all of which violate the deeply held beliefs of these organizations. The cases are just some of the many cases in which the Becket Fund is and has been involved, in the name of religious liberty, since the institute was founded back in 1994.

Each year, the Becket Fund awards the Canterbury Medal to the person who has “most resolutely refused to render to Caesar that which is God’s.” Like the institute, the medal get its name from the 12th Century Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, who refused to allow King Henry II to interfere in the Church’s affairs. At a ceremony in Manhattan, the Becket Fund awarded its founder with the 2012 Canterbury Medal.