While opening the Vatican archives on Pius XII may not resolve division, it will bring about answers
Let us agree that the 44 Democratic senators whose votes last month blocked the Born-Alive Protection Act aren’t monsters. But, that agreed, let us also agree that what they did was a moral atrocity whose effect was to safeguard the moral equivalent
The Vatican summit on clergy sex abuse repeatedly has been called a turning point. But taking that assessment as a statement of fact, it’s reasonable to ask: turning to what? In his talk after the gathering’s closing Mass, Pope Francis said the
This column is being written on the eve of a much-publicized summit meeting of bishops from around the world whom Pope Francis has summoned to Rome to discuss the sex abuse scandal but will appear after it. No matter how that gathering
Can a one-day conference at a university breathe life into a cause that lately appears to have stalled — involving the Catholic laity in ending the crisis of authority and trust afflicting the Church as a result of the sex abuse
Will a 94-year-old cross-shaped memorial honoring servicemen who died in World War I be the vehicle for a Supreme Court decision that affirms a more realistic interpretation of the Constitution’s ban on a governmental “establishment” of religion? That question will move a
A high-level international meeting on clerical sexual abuse, summoned by Pope Francis to take place at the Vatican in February, is simultaneously generating high hopes and notably modest expectations concerning what it will — or won’t — accomplish. On the one
The presence of thousands of pro-lifers at the annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 18, four days before the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, carried with it a sense of victory in sight for the marchers
Something that happened at a bishops’ meeting nearly half a century ago raises questions about the Vatican’s action this past November telling the U.S. bishops to cancel a scheduled vote on two proposals for self-policing on sexual abuse. It also illustrates the
Deploring the commercialization, secularization, and general thinning-out of the spiritual meaning of Christmas is part of the stock-in-trade of commentators on things religious, of whom your humble servant is one. Nor should we fail to mention those annual church-state battles in the