Why did the U S bishops fight the health care bill until the end even when President Obama signed an executive order prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion The bill may now be law but questions still linger In this Web-only article Nicholas P Cafardi of Duquesne University School o
In All Things
Poverty, Poetry, Chastity and Stephen Colbert
I m always up for something new and fun especially if it s just down the street nbsp Anyway when the good people at Bigthink a hip new website nbsp called me up for series of interviews in their way-cool downtown studio I was game nbsp They ask all sorts of experts sitting in front of
CSWR: 50 Years of Studying World Religions at Harvard
Cambridge MA You may recall from Jim Martin rsquo s kind notice in January that on July 1 I will become director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard I haven rsquo t done a thing yet but the Center moves along steadily and indeed has become venerable this week marking it
Happy Tax Day!
Tea Party activists are marking the deadline for filing federal income taxes with a protest hear in Washington D C Yesterday Sarah Palin was in Boston site of the original Boston Tea Party giving her fair and balanced interpretation of American history and its current political circumstance I
The Tudors…Get Better
According to Jake Martin SJ one of our television critics Showtime s The Tudors has finally hit its stride this season More often than not episodes of ldquo The Tudors rdquo jumped from plot point to plot point with all the subtlety of crashing cymbals Dialogue was a fusion of a ninth-g
Immigration Reform: If Not Now, When?
Last Saturday in Nevada Senate majority leader and candidate for reelection Harry Reid told an ebullient crowd that the Senate Democrats and the President had not forgotten immigration reform From the New York Times ldquo We rsquo re going to come back we rsquo re going to have comprehensive im
British bishops deplore Bertone view
The general secretary of the Catholic bishops conference of England and Wales issued the following statement this morning in response to Cardinal Bertone s attempt to link sex abuse of minors to homosexuality To the best of my knowledge there is no empirical data which concludes that sexual orien
Anti-Gay Bigotry
My colleague Father Martin has pointed out the ridiculousness of Cardinal Bertone rsquo s comments linking pedophilia with homosexuality I find the Cardinal Secretary of State rsquo s remarks not only offensive but completely inexplicable Why would he cite studies that do not exist or which were f
Pedophilia and Homosexuality
The comments yesterday from a high-ranking Vatican official linking homosexuality with pedophilia essentially blaming homosexual priests for the abuse crisis are all the more surprising when you consider a few salient points First of all nearly every reputable mainstream psychologist and psychia
Life Without Parole for Juveniles: Morally Wrong
I was recently asked to write a ldquo white paper rdquo draft for the California Catholic Bishops for possible voting on the issue of life-sentence without parole for juveniles The United States Supreme Court currently is adjudicating two petitions from incarcerated prisoners from the State of
