Here is the danger: that assisted suicide becomes the cheap alternative to health care.

The Hungarian cardinal, Peter Erdo, is playing a crucial role in the synod on the family, and now a somewhat controversial one.

Rather than the stage on which our story is unfolding, the universe becomes the crux of the story, and we just a part.

A church that is able to recover the interest of the young, “to demonstrate to them the possibility to live a life centered in the encounter with Jesus Christ…an encounter which gives meaning to life,” will be the church that can liberate the world’s young people “from the slavery of the present and invite them to be open to the future.”

Pope Francis enraptured both big and small crowds, leaving them both laughing and crying, be they the U.S. Congress or the tens of thousands that saw him in Philadelphia. Through it all, the pope seemed to just be himself, at least the self that we have become accustomed to seeing.

The pope’s visit struck cords in Africa on a number of levels. Some of the thorniest political debates in the United States are also difficult ones in Africa.