These two stories are particularly interesting when taken together In the first dated May 17 here Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone the Vatican s Secretary of State reaffirms the church s ban on ordaining gay men whether in the diocesan world or in religious orders The Vatican was respondin

John McCain in an effort to paint Barack Obama as wet behind the ears on security issues has taken the Illinois Senator to task for promising to meet with foreign leaders without preconditions McCain has focused much of his blast at the implications for relations with Iran whose leader is admitt

Among the endless reports of senseless bloodshed and revenge killings coming out of Iraq is one curious and inspiring story reported by CNS yesterday Catholic Bishop Rejects Execution of Iraqi Archbishop s Murderer Though Al Qaeda operative Ahmed Ali Ahmed was found guilty of kidnapping and

The Anchoress has an honest piece on how one goes about praying for someone--even if one is not initially inclined to It s no secret that for every Catholic fan of Senator Ted Kennedy and I am an enormous admirer of this remarkable man though I don t agree with him on everything there is

An excellent article by George Packer in this week s New Yorker traces the steady disintegration of the conservative movement Packer s history is a reminder that from its earliest days American conservativism was deeply attractive to many Catholics Writing about William J Buckley s memorial

In 2007 I predicted to anyone who would listen that the Democrats would have their nominee at 8 01 Iowa time on the night of that state s caucus The effort to front-load the calendar to give states other than Iowa and New Hampshire a bigger say in choosing the nominee seemed destined to have t

Many years ago now Pope John Paul II went to Lima Peru There he was met by a massive crowd of two million people Instead of the usual greetings from the President and the Cardinal two people from a shantytown stepped forward to the microphone Their names were Irene and Viktor Charo As the hug

Similar to the sane conservatives discussed last week some pro-choice liberals have begun to back away from the most extreme positions on abortion They have shifted their focus from fighting tooth-and-nail to eliminate even the whiff of a restriction on access to the procedure to trying and reduce

I recently returned from perhaps the best vacation of my life Eight days on the Mayan Riviera where some friends and I stayed at the Riu Palace Mexico a five-star resort south of Cancun Cozumel I highly recommend a trip there to all of you The all-inclusive package is a best buy for sure

This weekend Michael Tueth SJ a professor of communications at Fordham University in New York gave what I think was a wonderful homily at the baccalaureate Mass for graduating seniors And you don t have to be a student to appreciate it In just a few paragraphs leavened with humor he a

The recent kerfuffle over the National Abortion Rights Action League s endorsement of Sen Barack Obama put the radically pro-choice organization at the center of the news They were denounced by several pro-choice feminists including Ellen Malcolm the head of EMILY s List a group that seeks

John DiIulio's 'Godly Republic,' reviewed

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent revision of the “Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews” in the Latin text of the 1962 Good Friday liturgy set off a wave of questioning by puzzled Catholics and anxious concern among Jewish observers. Did the revival of language calling for the conversion

What’s New? I found “A Life in Theology,” by Avery Dulles, S.J. (4/21), to be somewhat disheartening, because he is dismissive of innovation and new insights, labeling some of them as deviant. “Very few new ideas, I suspect, are true,” he says. This suggests a claustrop

Gigantic waves—like those that surged across the Indian Ocean in 2005 taking countless lives—are now sweeping through the poorest nations of the world. In addition to the cyclonic waves that have wrought so much destruction this month, there are waves of hunger and anger caused by the dr

Martha Nussbaum's 'Liberty of Conscience,' reviewed

Why are some Catholics not allowed to dance during the liturgy?

How does the future of Catholicism in America appear to be shaping? Let us look at the facts. Immigration, the constant source hitherto of Catholic increase, has been cut down from the wide torrential river which it was before the Great War to an insignificant trickle. Mere numerical increase of the