As a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger made clear his desire for the church to find a way to convey to the world the joy at the heart of the Gospel. Now as Pope Benedict XVI, he has, with his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), taken a decisive step in that direction. What is fresh about the

Immigration issues continue to roil the waters of Congress, with the president himself caught in their turbulence. Mr. Bush traveled to the Southwest in November to promote again his plan for a guest worker program. This time, however, his reform proposal contains some harsh elements intended to soo

There has been a notably wide variety of interpretations from Catholic leaders of the Vatican instruction, published on Nov. 29, concerning the admission of gay men to orders. It is difficult, therefore, to determine exactly what effect it will have on future applicants to seminaries and religious o

Before the passage, on Nov. 15, of the new document from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on lay ecclesial ministry, there was debate in the bishops’ meetings over whether the term ministry should be used to refer to laypersons working on behalf of the church. The debate endeddramatical

In those countries that were once called Catholic, an ancient Gregorian chant that begins Te Deum laudamus (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name is a familiar English version) was sung on occasions of great public rejoicingthe ending of a war or the crowning of a king. It is still sung in many cathedrals on

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently offering an exhibition of the work of Fra Angelico (1390/95-1455), one of the most extraordinary artists of the early Italian Renaissance period. His vibrantly hued, finely detailed images of saints, angels and the Holy Family conjure wonder and emanate pe