The Guardian has obtained a letter by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone the Vatican rsquo s secretary of state addressed to the delegates attending the Lambeth conference of 650 Anglican bishops worldwide There rsquo s not much surprising in it ndash ldquo New issues that have arisen in our relationsh

An alarming ndash because wholly plausible ndash article in the British science journal Nature nbsp looks ahead to the future of human reproduction As they might say on the starship Enterprise it rsquo s fertility Jim but not as we know it Thirty years since the birth of the world rsquo s f

America will shortly be publishing a brief review of mine of The Duty of Delight nbsp the dazzling new collection of Dorothy Day s diaries but you might want to check out this new piece in The Tablet for a fuller treatment nbsp The book is simply stunning nbsp And as I mention in The Table

Check out TNR today for America blogger Michael Sean Winter s take on the Catholic vote and how it may hurt or help nbsp Barack Obama Barack Obama has a Catholic problem While Catholics constitute only 23 percent of the nation s population their numbers are higher in such critical states a

Of all the reasons to resent the tortured outcome to the 2000 election mess in Florida with its hanging chads strong-arm politics and less than convincing Supreme Court decision the absence of presidential leadership on environmental issues is one of the biggies This morning rsquo s Washington Po

My old boss the Archbishop of Westminster will not unusually be leading the annual diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes which begins Sunday This in spite of it being the 150th anniversary of the apparitions and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O rsquo Connor rsquo s last Lourdes pilgrimage as Archbishop of We

nbsp Here I am in Los Angeles about to start a retreat when I pick up today rsquo s The Los Angeles Times carrying stories about mortgage-bank woes gay weddings forest fires and the like nbsp Buried in the Arts section is a thumbnail review of the new documentary about Roman Polanski ldq

As some of you may have noticed you can now share America s articles on Facebook and other networking sites Simply click share in the upper right hand corner of an article page and your favorite article from America will appear on your Facebook page The best part if you re a subscriber a

ldquo What rsquo s the matter with Texas rdquo This morning rsquo s Houston Chronicle headlines the news that the Governor of Texas Rick Perry has refused to acknowledge an order from the World Court to stay the planned August 5th execution of a Mexican citizen convicted of murder ldquo The w

The July 11 edition of Religion amp Ethics Newsweekly included a nice feature on the 150th anniversary of Lourdes Among those interviewed was Fr Jim Martin who has written about his trips to Lourdes in America here and here You can watch the R amp E piece and read the transcript here Tim Rei

The Times of London is reporting that in preparation for the not-too-far-off canonization of Venerable John Henry Newman his remains are to be ldquo disinterred rdquo and placed on view in order that the faithful may venerate them or more precisely him nbsp ldquo The Vatican has ordered t

My previous 1 choice for Obama rsquo s vice-presidential pick Sen Jim Webb has taken himself out of consideration And none of the other choices possess the combination of national security experience bipartisan credentials and experienced winning a key swing state that Webb brought to the ta

There is a story in the Independent newspaper -- not normally one to run a religious ldquo exclusive rdquo -- that the Catholic Church rsquo s policy faced with the Anglican meltdown is to do what it can to help Dr Rowan Williams to hold it together nbsp ldquo Pope rides to Rowan s rescue rdq

Over a number of weeks now the Liturgy has been offering readings from Romans 8 This chapter means to build on and reverse the disheartening reality of Chapter 7 highlighted in Paul famous saying I know what is right and I want what is right but I do what is wrong who will save me from th

The airwaves have been filled with moral posturing to an extraordinary degree as a result of the New Yorker magazine rsquo s cover art depicting Sen Barack Obama dressed in traditional Muslim garb fist-bumping his wife who is sporting an AK-47 standing in the Oval Office with a picture of Osama

As he had on his trip to the United States in April Pope Benedict XVI addressed reporters on his recent flight to Sydney Australia about the sex abuse crisis in the country that he is about to visit nbsp Once again even before landing he takes up the issue mdash of particular import as he be

Not everyday do we associate New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg rsquo s name with poverty The man is worth some 11 billion dollars having made his fortune first at Salomon Brothers and later his own firm Bloomberg L P But yesterday he proposed a new way to measure poverty that is worthy of much

Here they are http catholicsformccain com nbsp The site states that Senator John McCain is pro-life and committed to nominating judges who are pro-life nbsp In issues of human dignity he is guided by a spirit of compassion that was born out of great suffering as a prisoner of war John McC

Gene Robinson the openly gay American Bishop of New Hampshire whose consecration in 2003 sparked the current Anglican crisis was forced to halt his sermon at a London church today after a lone heckler nbsp with a motorcycle helmet nbsp disrupted the service nbsp When Robinson mentioned the ldq

Sacrilege is a potent word nbsp The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as a nbsp violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object nbsp Now P Z Myers an associate professor at the University of Minnesota in Morris has decided that nbsp Catholic reverence for the Eucharist is a throwback to