In the late 1980’s, Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan of Atlanta suffered a seriously debilitating stroke, so severe that he was not able to communicate with anyone around him. Archdiocesan officials consulted the then recently revised Code of Canon Law and followed its directions for what to do

How should the Catholic Church in the United States respond to what some have labeled the gay agenda? One way would be simply to restate what has been declared repeatedly. This approach, however, may not meet the challenge. The so-called gay agenda has been in the making roughly since 1969, when the

Driving to the university the other morning during rush hour, I was delayed briefly by the motorist ahead of me, who paused to let traffic enter from a side streeta courteous, helpful gesture, certainly. Moments later, in the elevator on the way up to my office, I was delayed once againthis time by

Who are the young people most at risk-these days for crime? They tend to be the black and brown fatherless youth who inhabit our inner cities, and who lack mentors, ministers and monitors. The absence of responsible authoritative adults in their lives, in addition to poverty and the lack of educatio

Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau of the Pontifical Council for the Family recently published “Prophylactics or Family Values? Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS” in the weekly edition of L’Osservatore Romano (4/19). Here we find important signals of what many have suspected all along: that

Although their day has long passed, the moral theology textbooks in use before the Second Vatican Council were not without a number of enduring merits. These seminary manuals, for example, recognized the need, in establishing the truth of an ethical thesis, to define all relevant terms fully and exa

Summer is not a good time to have significant events occur; too often they are missed by those who should know about them and would want to know about them. It is likely, for example, that even dedicated readers of the Catholic press did not see two announcements that should not go unacknowledged.Tw

Many members of the current Congress came to Washington with promises to repeal the federal income tax or at least replace it with a flat tax. It hasn’t happened. They and their Congressional leaders discovered that the federal income tax is too deeply rooted to be ripped out or radically chan

If saints were still chosen by popular acclamation, those of us who knew Edward Skillin, the late publisher of Commonweal magazine, would be shouting his name from the rooftops. Edward stopped going into the Commonweal office only two years ago, at age 94. He first joined the staff in 1933, as a you

The United States once again holds first place as the world’s biggest arms sellerso noted the recent report of the Congressional Research Service, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, delivered annually to Congress. Here is a troubling distinction indeed, given the fact that the