Continuing EmbarrassmentThe Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba has increasingly become an embarrassment for the United States. In mid-February, a team of five inspectors from the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva issued a lengthy report documenting human rights violations alleged to be ta

The world has always been a dangerous place, and each generation has had to confront its own set of challenges. During the years of the cold war, when the Soviet Union and the United States were locked in a nuclear standoff, the very survival of the international community was at stake. The danger w

Milwaukee School Choice Program to ExpandWith just days left before a rationing plan was to begin for students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, Wisconsin’s Gov. Jim Doyle and Assembly Speaker John Gard announced on Feb. 17 that the enrollment cap will increase next fall by 7,500 stude

The two most prominent authors we are reading in my course this semester for advanced undergraduates on the classics of spirituality are Augustine of Hippo and Dante Alighieri. I see by his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that Benedict XVI has been reading them as well. It will come as no surpri

"Actualizing” Scripture, or bringing it to life, is based on the conviction that “the word of God is living and active” (Heb 4:12) and speaks anew to believers in different times and places. This process is carried out by theologians, preachers, teachers, artists, those who pr

Reviewed in our pages in 2006, 'One Nation Under God,' offers a vivid portrait of public prayer in American history.

Social movements sometimes grow slowly out of sight, like Mark’s “seed growing secretly,” and then burst forth suddenly with astonishing rightness, just made for the times. So it is with the Religious Campaign Against Torture (www.nrcat.org). George Hunsinger, a graduate school cla

Cities vary in their responses to the needs of their homeless populations. Some are very mean indeed as the numbers of homeless people continue to rise. Take Sarasota, Fla. After state courts overturned two successive anti-lodging laws as applied to public spaces, the city persisted and this past su

Israeli Citizen Named Melkite ArchbishopFor the first time, the Vatican and the Melkite Catholic Synod of Bishops have agreed on an Israeli citizen to be archbishop of Akko, Israel. Archimandrite Elias Chacour, parish priest of the village of Ibillin in northern Galilee and founder of Mar Elias Coll