America’s Catholic bishops have taken on a cause that can win broad public support - fighting to support marriage, as Bishop J. Kevin Boland of Savannah put it at the annual fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November. Public debate at the moment is focused on whether h
You will not find Kakuma on most world maps. It is a small town in northwestern Kenya, located in the desert where anthropologists hypothesize the human race began. Twelve years ago, the Kenyan government picked the area for use as a refugee camp. Today Kakuma has 80,000 refugees.The largest group a
In an unprecedented undertaking, from June 3 through Oct. 31, 2003, independent auditors reviewed the management actions taken by 191 Catholic dioceses in the United States to comply with the provisions of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. The charter, adopted by the Unite
Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow—a tiny figure in tight jeans and a short, snug-fitting jacket—was talking about her art. She stood out in marked contrast to her surroundings, the cavernous 19th-century Great Hall of the Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan, where Abraham Lincoln once spok
Judging Miguel Estrada
The support expressed by John W. Donohue, S.J. , for Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is misguided, and his equation of the threatened filibuster to the actions of Bully Brooks is irresponsible
Rampant mental illness in jails and prisons combines two forms of suffering for offenders: the illness itself and having to endure it behind bars. The sheer magnitude of the problem is shocking. Jails and prisons hold three times as many mentally ill people as mental health hospitals. This is partly
The Amish are a unique phenomenon in American and Christian culture. During a summer vacation when I was 17, I had the rare opportunity to experience the life of these people in an intimate way. Side by side with a young family of eight Old Order Amish, I milked cows, tilled fields, bailed hay and h