How religious liberty could become a second-class right

It rsquo s no secret that young people aren rsquo t as likely to practice their faith or any faith at all as their parents but this trend appears to be growing across large swaths of other demographics as well Diana Butler Bass explores this phenomenon in her new book Christianity After Religion

You didn t think we were going to pass up an opportunity to review The Artist did you nbsp Especially after its performance at the Oscars nbsp Victor Stepien looks at this unusual film nbsp Silent movies came to an end in the 1920s As talkies took over a whole generation of celebrated ac

Bishop William E Lori the chairman of the U S bishops Ad Hoc Committeee on Religious Liberty has sent a response to America s editorial Policy Not Liberty The letter will also appear in an upcoming issue of the print edition The March 5th America editorial takes the United States Bishops t

Be sure to catch both parts of M Cathleen Kaveny professor of theology and law at Notre Dame explaining Catholic morality the role of the bishops and the development of the lay theologian on The Daily Show last night Part II can be found here It was noteable for being a calm and lucid dis

As this is written according to Barak Ravid rsquo s report in Ha rsquo aretz nbsp Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ldquo publicly harden his line against Iran during a meeting with President Barak Obama in Washington on March 5 rdquo According to Ravid there is ldquo mistrust rd

It rsquo s difficult to imagine a biblical passage so well known and yet so utterly incomprehensible to modern readers as Abraham rsquo s near sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah In this age of Tiger Moms and of parents whose lives revolve around their children what are we to make of a story in wh

nbsp nbsp nbsp The thirty-second annual Paul Wattson Lecture named after the founder of the Graymoor Friars was held Feb 27 at the University of San Francisco The Wattson lectures on whose board I serve always stress issues of ecumenism to honor the man who also inaugurated the annual we

During a Washington press conference Tuesday Department of nbsp Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters the Obama administration plans to issue a rule in the near future on its compromise plan on contraception coverage that will apparently resolve some outstanding pro

Too much coverage of Downton Abbey in the media nbsp Never nbsp For our second-season roundup we knew that there was only one writer for the job our film reviewer John Anderson who often writes for The New York Times and Variety nbsp My favorite apercu nbsp Perhaps the most remarkable t

A woman in the Washington D C area is reeling after being denied communion at a funeral Mass for her deceased mother From the Washington Post Deep in grief Barbara Johnson stood first in the line for Communion at her mother rsquo s funeral Saturday morning But the priest in front of her immed

The CACG voter guide has just been posted online A sample In our country a long series of social and political achievements give testimony to the thirst for justice and human dignity that are at the core of the Church rsquo s social teaching From the creation of Social Security and unemployment

Our Lenten recommendations this year focused on taking up certain practices But in some cases giving up something may still be a good spiritual discipline In our next issue link to come our editors recommend giving up election news And over at The Jesuit Post Michael Rossman S J has pr

Do some human beings just die and that rsquo s it nbsp Two highly respected theologians I have been reading lately propose that the afterlife may not happen for everyone nbsp Their books affirm and support the reality of Christ rsquo s resurrection and his promise of eternal life for Christians

From Mensaje magazine via Mirada Global Should we be worried about China Its rise as a relevant actor is undoubtedly the central phenomenon in 21st century international relations The deep political and economic changes currently in course show a radical transformation of the international order

On Feb 10 Mary Ann Glendon Robert P George and others signed an open letter titled Unacceptable rejecting President Obama s proposed accommodation on the HHS contraception mandate An updated version of the letter signed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan was released today and is available here as

Read Karen Sue Smith on Meryl Streep in the The Iron Lady and Michael V Tueth S J on Octavia Spencer and the cast of The Help Fr Tueth also reviewed Woody Allen s Midnight in Paris which won best original screenplay and I reviewed Alexander Payne s The Descendants which garnered the

Nefas literally ldquo unspeakable rdquo is a Latin word for evil It is a heavy word weightier than malum the term for a garden-variety moral wrongdoing It is an offense against the sacred sacrilege in the sense of a ritual violation but even more in the sense of a violation of the divine

For two or three consecutive years in grade school I got a handout at the beginning of Lent. It was a millionth-generation chart of sorts, handdrawn by someone in the 1970s, most likely. It had little pictures of eggs and jellybeans with little hand-written suggestions in them. The idea was that you