"There has been no vocal, effective, reliable and consistent constituency for Africa in this country," complained Leonard H. Robinson Jr., a deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan and Bush administrations. "Africa needs all the friends it can get in Amer

"I’m pro-life." Simple as that. At least according to presidential candidate George Bush. But this simple sentence has become as empty as its opposite formulations, "I’m pro-choice," or "I’m for a woman’s right to choose."The contents of these sl

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin articulated a consistent ethic of life, which included opposition to both abortion and the death penalty, in 1985. Ten years later, in his encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II taught that opposing capital punishment should be part of a pro-life witness for a cul

Responding to conflicting appellate court decisions, the United States Supreme Court is now reviewing the constitutionality of the bans by some states on "partial-birth" abortion. Because of the unusually graphic candor found in those prior decisions, the Supreme Court will confront as nev

If Hollywood were to offer us a movie in which a father, guilty of incest with his daughter, was treated as a dignified, even sympathetic character, would anyone be offended? Would anyone notice? And if this same movie treated abortion as a sacramental rite of passage, akin to confirmation or bar mi

As long as there is earth under your feet

Country Held HostageYour editorial Send the Boy Home to Cuba (3/11) has many inaccuracies:1) The title makes Elián look like a parcel or inanimate object that could be easily shipped to Cuba. He is a young human being, whose feelings must be taken into account. After almost four months in the Unite

Examination of Conscience Culminates in Pope’s Mea CulpaPope John Paul II made an unprecedented apology for the sins of Christians through the ages, the culmination of the church’s examination of conscience for the jubilee year. The pope’s long-awaited mea culpa on March 12 was ech

Robert Clark rsquo s parents divorced when he was two and his father died of polio three years later so he found himself in the care of his grandfather Griggs who owned a house in a forest of jack pine and spruce in northern Wisconsin and that house is for him the location of his childhood The

Concordats are treaties between states and the Holy See regulating the civil status of the church Because the Holy See represents not only political interests but moral ones as well concordats unlike most treaties tend to be confused in the popular mind with the notion that the Holy See approves