Should people who work still be poor? Few argue that they should. Yet the federal minimum wage remains a shocking $5.15 an hour. Advocates for living wages point to the Santa Fe local minimum wage of $9.50 an hour as much more just. Msgr. Jerome Martínez of Santa Fe, who stoutly supported the local

The sky over Washington Square hung cloudy and gray, as if it reflected the mood of a group of New York University graduate students gathering there. Although it was graduation day (May 11, 2006), these newly minted Ph.D.’s and continuing graduate students were dispirited because the universit

It is both sad and ironic that the National Labor Relations Board, the independent federal agency created during the Depression to safeguard the workers’ right to unionize, has instead been complicit in the demise of workers’ rights. The disturbing trend, which began during the administr

Winston Churchill launched Operation Gomorrah, ordering high-explosive and incendiary bombs to be dropped on the city of Hamburg on July 24, 1943. Five days later more than 50,000 civilians were dead. Two-and-a-half years later, the city of Dresden, crowded with refugees and of little strategic impo

This volume exquisitely edited by Kenneth Himes O F M is a superb contribution to Catholic social ethics and will undoubtedly serve as a basic text providing a synthetic statement of the last century of the Catholic social tradition While its primary audience is the Catholic community it prov

Immigration and AssimilationAmerican Catholics, long thought of as a church of immigrants, continue to see their numbers augmented by an influx of new Americans. Dealing successfully with this new population will be a major challenge for the church in the new century. If history is any guide, we wil

Knights’ Relief Quick and Generous The $10 million raised by the Knights of Columbus for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast represents the largest disaster relief effort in the organization’s 124-year history, reported Patrick Korten, vice president for communications. Almost before the

One of the strongest and most distinctive features of U.S. Catholicism is the central place parishes play in the church’s life. In recent years we have heard a lot about the closing of some parishes and reconfigurations of others, especially in parts of the country like the Rust Belt. But the

A rainy November evening finds three dozen people gathered for prayer at the Cabrini Center for Nursing in Manhattan’s East Village. They include Anthony Frarracci, who arrives early to help arrange the chairs in a circle, and Vita Santangelo, a wheelchair-bound native of Sicily whose recent 9