Rarely has the U S Catholic community been so publicly at odds over a social policy matter as the U S bishops and U S women religious communities were in the climax of the health care reform debate in March The bishops applying what can only be described as speculative interpretations of the pl

President Obama amplifying remarks of former Secretaty of State Condolezza Rice during the Bush administration and more recently by Vice President Biden and CENTCOM s General David Petreaus said something out loud that appears radical but is actually rather obvious resolving the long-running Mid

Like many other Catholic publications nbsp America nbsp has nbsp urged the church to step forward with all it knows as quickly as possible if for no other reason than to put an end to this brutal media dissection Surely someone was aware during the past weeks of protests to the contrary that the

We mentioned this protest in the April 12 Signs of the Times A group of Palestinian Christians and supporters march after Palm Sunday Mass from the Church of Nativity to Jerusalem and caught Israeli border police by surprise I think everybody was surprised how far they got past the checkpoint befo

Two tales out of one city Rome leave me wondering if some of the priests who finally get it about the sexual abuse crisis may be found in an order that has endured what can only be described as extraordinary revelations of abuse while some at the Vatican are prepared to continue digging deeper

It was probably too much to hope that our family squabble over the health care reform package nbsp could have been conducted without generating too much acrimony But the current divergence of thinking on health care reform though it may appear little more than a ball of confusion to many lay Catho

Father Jim Martin made another emergency spiritual call on Comedy Central as part of his side gig The Colbert Report chaplain This time Jim stopped by to explain a little about Catholic Social Teaching and why Glen Beck probably wouldn t make a good pope Colbert still doesn t seem to get it I do

I have found myself marveling this week at the small parade of gay-outings among U S politicians Like previous media outings of closeted politicians these expose men who have often built their reputations and careers on their passion for family values and their antipathy to anything that smacks o

European Catholics who may have hoped sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy was mostly a North American problem may be waking up to the widespread reality of this crisis A sudden eruption of stories of abuse emerging from Ireland Germany Austria and the Netherlands must be reverberating unp

The jaw-dropping revelations of the appalling double life of Mexico s Marcial Maciel just keep coming James Ellroy wouldn t write such stuff and expect anyone to buy it Two years after his death the execrable life and times of the founder of the powerful Catholic religious order the Legion of Chr