Light moves very slowly at Harvard. That’s because Prof. Lene Vestergaard Hau did what what Einstein himself would have had difficulty imagining: she harnessed light. The key to doing so was figuring out how to super-cool atoms so that they acted as if they were just one, dense, nebulous atom.

In the biblical field there are matters of debate that remain unsettled, at least for now.

More questions and answers about the next pope from Thomas J. Reese, S.J.

Raising the Minimum; Save the Vote; Hearing All Sides

Brother BenedictWhen Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, we all knew that his papacy would not last as long as those of some of his predecessors. So his resignation should not be a complete surprise, and we ought to praise God for the eight years that Pope Benedict has been able to serve an

Living as I do in a very large, fragile glass house, I am reluctant to throw stones.

Ellen Grady, a member of the Catholic Worker from Ithaca, N.Y., does not like the idea that war has come home to her backyard. The war, in this case, is the country’s war on terror. The place where it is being waged is the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, a little more than

Mary Jo Copeland, founder of Sharing and Caring Hands and Mary’s Place for the homeless in Minneapolis, Minn., was honored on Feb. 15 with the Presidential Citizens Medal. • A Pew Research survey reports Americans favor President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an h

Church historians measure time in centuries, not weeks, so it is a daunting challenge to attempt even a brief assessment of a pontificate just concluded. Daring to go where prophets should fear to tread, what follows can only be a tentative status quaestionis of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy at t

For secular Washington, Benedict was the pope of no. For those who listened, Benedict is more the pope of and, connecting charity and truth, faith and reason.

President Obama also should urge Israel to adopt more moderate, conciliatory policies.

Odds are, if you have checked out the entertainment section of a newspaper recently, you have heard something about House of Cards, Netflix’s first major original series. Perhaps you have heard the fact that in February Netflix released all 13 episodes of the program’s first season at on

The next pope will have a Catholic world in transformation to shepherd.

A Sri Lankan Catholic bishop and 132 Christian clergypersons and religious from different churches in north and east Sri Lanka have written a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council appealing for an end to the crisis in that country. They charge that thousands of Tamil people, including church leade

Who was the last pope to step down from his office? How many popes have resigned?

You can’t gut something, then leave behind a void and call it a legacy.

Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement on Feb. 11 caught the world by surprise and moved many to reflect not only on his decision to step down from the See of Peter, but on the highlights of his eight-year papacy. We asked four contributors to reflect on Pope Benedict’s legacy, as evidenced in

News of the pope’s pending resignation sparked much commentary on America’s Web site. Here we offer a selection of the responses. To take part in the discussion, visit americamagazine.org.It is revealing the different decisions made by saints and popes facing similar conditions. The uniq

German bishops agreed to permit certain types of “morning after” pills.

Kasper spoke of a “deaconess” role that could include special liturgical functions.