Would full disclosure of the names of clergy offenders help these survivors and the countless other men and women who have still not reported their abuse to come forward?

Gun control is about the defense of life.

There is a surefire cure for pride, however, and it is as simple as a reminder of some of the moments when we got things just a little wrong. Or a lot wrong.

A plenary council or regional synod may not have been good ideas anyway. But more and more, the attitude appears to be that the church’s business is the bishops’ business and no one else’s; openness and a desire to involve others in church affairs seem to have become passé. It is worth considering why.

At his 80th birthday party last year, celebrated with dozens of friends in the garden of his home in northwestern Connecticut, Isaac Stern asked me to sit next to him at dinner. Rarely have I felt so honored. His luminous personality represented to me the perfect combination of a monumentally succes