"See how they love one another." According to Tertullian, a Christian writing in 197, this was the amazed comment of outsiders observing the members of the new Christian sect that was then sweeping the Roman Empire. That was in the second century, early in the history of Christianity. Duri

Is there a public institution in America more reviled than our national political conventions? (Picking on Congress doesn’t count.) Every four years the punditry class informs us that conventions are little more than glorified political commercials, which enlightened people ought to avoid for

Encuentro 2000 Celebrates Diverse U.S. ChurchEncuentro 2000 opened with Native American drums calling the participants from across the nation to gather in assembly. At the end of its final liturgy, 5,000 worshipers tied ribbons to one another’s wrists, a traditional Hmong sign of sending forth

Evaluated in ConscienceSister Jeannine Gramick’s unenviable situation (Signs of the Times, 6/17) calls to mind the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas (envisioning, actually, an even more extreme situation): When an ecclesiastical decision that is evaluated in conscience as certainly unacceptable is

The timing could not have been more appropriate: On the first day of the annual conference in Washington, D.C., of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its report to Congress on worst-case housing needs. The title itself goes to the hear

Thanks to medical advances, Americans are living longer than ever before. A dark underside to this picture, however, is the rising incidence of elder abuse—an increase that is related to the growing number of elderly people in the United States. Demographers predict that the numbers of elderly

Justice and Human RightsI would like to add to the fine editorial, Solidarity in Globalization (6/3). Representing the Sisters of St. Joseph at the United Nations, I have come to realize that, in addition to all that was so eloquently expressed in your editorial regarding how Americans need to respo

The contemporary world situation demands a successor of Peter who, with divine assistance, can teach and direct the entire people of God.

The nation had little choicepun intendedwhen it came to the abortion controversy. I say this after 40 years as a reporter who entered the business with pride and left it feeling ashamed. I underwent this transformation largely because of the way so many of my colleagues handled the wording and shadi