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U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., raises the gavel during the opening session of the new Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington Jan. 3. Ryan, who is Catholic, was re-elected speaker of the House of Representatives earlier in the day. (CNS photo/Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)

Politics & SocietyLast Take

Women hold the keys to making Washington work again.

Cokie Roberts

January 06, 2017

Do not expect a return to the days when comity could be coaxed with a little (or a lot) of bourbon and branch.

Water on the Agenda? During his campaign Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to end water boil notices in First Nations communities within five years. Mr. Trudeau is pictured here greeting a participant at the start of a meeting with aboriginal organizations on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Dec. 15. (CNS photo/Chris Wattie, Reuters)

Politics & SocietyDispatches

Should public water be owned by a private company? Canada is about to find out.

Dean Dettloff

January 06, 2017

Canadians will have to confront a difficult question: Is water a common good or a private commodity?

Politics & SocietyYour Take

Your Take: Trump's first 100 days

Our readers

January 06, 2017

We asked our readers what issues should President-Elect Donald J. Trump focus on in his first 100 days as president.

Nuns distribute food and drinks to needy people in St. Peter's square at the Vatican, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. After the Angelus prayer Pope Francis offered some 300 needy people a simple lunch of a sandwich and drink, as part of his long-running outreach to the poor and homeless who live around the Vatican.(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

FaithNews

Pope Francis gathers Rome's homeless to celebrate Epiphany.

Nicole Winfield - Associated Press

January 06, 2017

Francis said he too wanted to give the faithful the gift of God's mercy for the coming year.

Jionni Conforti poses for The Associated Press in his home, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017, in Totowa, N.J. The transgender man has sued St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson, N.J., after he says it cited religion in refusing to allow his surgeon to perform a hysterectomy procedure he said was medically necessary as part of his gender transition. Conforti, had scheduled the surgery in 2015, but he alleges in the federal lawsuit that a hospital administrator then told him the procedure to remove the uterus he was born with couldn't be done because it was a "Catholic hospital." (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Politics & SocietyNews

Transgender man sues Catholic hospital for refusing sex change surgery

Josh Cornfield - Associated Press

January 06, 2017

Jionni Conforti's sex and gender discrimination lawsuit comes as new regulations hailed as groundbreaking anti-discrimination protections for transgender people are under legal attack from religious groups.

People demonstrate outside the White House in early July after shootings by police and of police took place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Minneapolis and Dallas. The U.S. bishops will discuss ways to promote peace in U.S. communities torn apart by violence, vote on ways to implement priority areas for their conference approved last year and elect new leaders during their Nov. 14-16 fall general assembly in Baltimore. (CNS photo/Jim Lo Scalzo, EPA)

Faith

How the U.S. bishops are planning to bring peace in 2017

Carol Zimmermann - Catholic News Service

January 06, 2017

The church is at her absolute best when she is a bold and prophetic voice for the power of the love upon which our faith is based.

Arts & CultureTelevision

Sherlock Holmes: Pop Culture's Christ Figure

Jake Martin

January 06, 2017

What is it about Sherlock; drama that elicits such admiration and, at times, troubling obsessiveness?

Self-serve. Residents steal gasoline and diesel from a service station on Jan. 3 after protests against fuel price hikes in Allende, Veracuz state, Mexico. The gas station workers who inactivated the pumps were intimidated by demonstrators into turning them back on, and allowing the residents to take fuel. (AP Photo/Erick Herrera)

Politics & SocietyDispatches

While Mexicans angered by hike in gas prices protest, a call for political change

Jan-Albert Hootsen

January 06, 2017

I haven't seen such an outburst of nationwide anger in many years.

California Dreaming? A Donald Trump campaign sign along a highway near Los Banos, Calif. (AP Photo/Scott Smith)

Politics & SocietyDispatches

Who will be Donald Trump's real opposition? Maybe the state of California.

Jim McDermott

January 05, 2017

The real alternative government in the United States is not the federal Democratic Party, but the state government of California.

Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, patron of the Knights and Dames of Malta, left, talks with Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, before Pope Francis' celebration of vespers on New Year's Eve in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 31 (CNS photo/Paul Haring).

Faith

Pope Francis still hasn't responded to the dubia. He has good reason not to.

Louis J. Cameli

January 05, 2017

The dubia stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of 'Amoris Laetitia' and the renewal that began with Vatican II.

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