A relatively new phenomenon in this centurythey began to appear only in the early 1980’sprivately operated prisons have rapidly proliferated throughout much of the United States, especially in the South and West. Their upward surge is one result of ongoing tough-on-crime policies that have swo

Election night proved to be the most exciting moment of the 2000 presidential campaign as American voters split almost perfectly over the candidacies of George W. Bush and Al Gore. The closeness of the race had been anticipated, but the networks added to the roller-coaster excitement by first predic

It is a strange happenstance that many people, whether justified or not, see foreboding clouds looming over Catholic health care, Catholic higher education, and Catholic ecumenism. While some may contend that the problem is within these institutions, others fear that the threat is from the hierarchi

Pope Says Politicians Must Conform Civil Laws to God’s LawPope John Paul II said political leaders must conform civil laws and policies to God’s objective moral law and to principles of solidarity and justice. An estimated 15,000 public officials from 92 countries attended the Jubilee fo

Contraceptive MentalityI am writing to offer a criticism of your editorial on RU-486 (10/14). I find one of the suggestions in your last paragraph most curiousnamely, your claim that there are people who accept the church’s teaching on contraception but reject her teaching on abortion. Aside f

Flophouse is greater than the sum of its parts That is it is far more than a book of striking photographs of Bowery men and their surroundings with brief accompanying texts Because the four Bowery hotels described in the book are among the last of their kind in New York City the book has an ele

What may even be worse than racism an African-American friend said not long ago is white guilt over racism He went on to quote everyone from Lenny Bruce and the Rev Martin Luther King Jr to W E B Du bois Racism was a problem yes but focusing on what is not being done to balance racial rel

If you are like me, you resent having your name on everyone’s mailing list, receiving direct mail of all sorts, mostly junk, and sometimes having your dinner hour interrupted with telephone solicitations. The scrupulous among us, however, not wanting to miss out on that one, real, authentic of

On Nov. 17, 1953, the secretary of the Holy Office, Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo, sent a letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bernard Griffin. Graham Greene’s book THE POWER AND THE GLORY, it began, published in London in 1940 and afterwards translated into several languages, has be