I am writing from Philadelphia where the Occupy National Gathering began on Saturday and will continue through the 4th of July The purposes of this event a kind of conference supported by many of the Occupy sites in the USA include comparing notes on shared concerns of the various Occupations an

Not being a New Yorker I had never heard of Christine Quinn before catching a recent interview with her on NPR nbsp I was listening to Weekend Edition Sunday while diligently riding my exercise bike but my pace slowed when she was asked about the difficulty of being Catholic and lesbian The int

I am doing something of a spin-off on Michael O Loughlin s blog about tough questions in Oakland My concern is less the debate between Bishop Cordilione and the Board of the Catholic Association for Gay and Lesbian ministry but rather the disturbing and growing recourse to ecclesiastical loyalty o

National Catholic Reporter offers a detailed look at an emerging controversy in the Diocese of Oakland involving a national association that offers pastoral support to gay and lesbian Catholics and a bishop rsquo s quest to assess its Catholicity From NCR Following a more than yearlong investigat

Why study the Psalms Henry Wansbrough notes the following Compellingly they were used by Jesus in addressing his Father Martin Luther noted that the entire Bible is contained in the Psalms rdquo The Psalms put our inchoate longings or as St Paul would say groanings into words Wordsworth

We are happy to announce that America is now available on the Nook the e-reader from Barnes amp Noble Nook offers an excellent experience for magazine readers Each issue is downloaded as a PDF so you can see the magazine layed out as you would in print format And there are links for easy read

American school children are taught to revere the sacrifice made by soldiers in the Continental Army during the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge Most don rsquo t realize that the following winter outside Morristown New Jersey was even worse Here rsquo s a soldier rsquo s description from Th

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld most of the Affordable Care Act Congressional supporters and President Obama have one final opportunity to sell the health care reform to the American people Although they worked hard and long to pass the bill against Republican opposition in Congress they fa

Decision just announced Mandate constitutional ACA survives intact nbsp Biggest surprise may be that Chief Justice Roberts voted for the majority saving Obamacare From Scotusblog reading decision Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A

The final event of the Catholic Media Conference is the Catholic Press Award ceremony We re happy to announce that this year America received 15 awards Our winning entries are First Place Best Essay ldquo A Hidden Sorrow rdquo Christopher Pramuk April 11 2011 Best Coverage of Immigration ld

Catholic journalists from across the United States and Canada gathered June 20-22 for this year s Catholic Media Conference in Indianapolis Ind The conference offers workshops on topics ranging from multimedia skills to Christians in the Middle East This year s event also offered a wealth of impr

I was just starting to read Ryan Lizza rsquo s ldquo The Second Term What Would Obama Do If Reelected rdquo in The New Yorker when my friend Dave Baugnon a filmmaker from New Orleans asked me the same question Now I find that the more I read the more a gap grows between what I would like him

The conversion to Catholicism by a once prominent atheist writer is gaining some attention From CNN She went from atheist to Catholic in just over 1 000 words Leah Libresco who rsquo d been a prominent atheist blogger for the religion website Patheos announced on her blog this week that after y

The national media have noted the unprecedented election in June of the Rev Fred Luter Jr 55 who is the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention His election has been hailed as a historic turnabout in a denomination that once defended slavery And it is a marked rever

We are happy to report that In All Things received top honors from the Catholic Press Association at the Catholic Media Conference this weekend The category Best er Online Group Blog A hearty thanks to all of our contributors mdash their unique mix of social and spiritual analyses is truly wo

Thank God for Jimmy Carter In today rsquo s N Y Times he catalogues and warns against America rsquo s current violations of basic human rights nbsp He lists the growing number of atrocious U S abuses against the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rule of law Carter voices the i

Robert Sirico s well financed defenses of libertarian economics often rise to the level of self-parody but his statement in the NY Times story on Duquesne University s scandalous attempt to fight a union for adjunct instructors is astounding in its ignorance or mendacious misrepresentation of the b

Some breaking news from the Vatican today via Reuters The Vatican has hired an American journalist from the Fox News Network and member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei to help improve its relations with the media a senior Church source said on Saturday Greg Burke Fox s Rome-based

Douglas W Kmiec U S Ambassador ret a legal scholar and the Caruso Family Chair in Constitutional Law amp Human Rights at Pepperdine University in Malibu California sent us this guest blog today Empathy Applied-- Why President Obama will win the health care case Those predicting defeat

Cambridge MA Another reason for reading Professor Margaret Farley rsquo s Just Love the book recently censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a reason that might occur mainly to people like me theologian-cum-Hinduism-scholar-and-comparativist it talks about the Kama Sutra