Recent edicts and explanations of edicts out of Rome have ignited a familiarly unpleasant conflict in the U.S. church. And yet, though this will infuriate a vocal minority of my fellow Catholics, I just don’t get the brouhaha over the traditional Latin Mass.

A Reflection for the Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

Patriarch Sabbah: “When you celebrate Christmas, remember that in Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, life is not a Christmas life. It is not the blessed life of the new redeemed humanity. The song of the Angels is far away.”

The case came as an unhappy shock to Catholics all over the United States who might have hoped that years of procedural changes would have put an end to the ordination of priests like the Rev. Robert McWilliams.

“Every Cuban should be able to freely and respectfully express and share his personal opinions, his thoughts or his convictions, even when he disagrees with the majority,” the bishops said.

C.R.S. is beginning an emergency campaign to get food on tables and crops in the field as a hunger catastrophe looms in Afghanistan.

“Having the most powerful political leader in the world and the greatest moral voice of our time talking together about climate change is extremely powerful.”

The pope calls his three T’s—“Tierra, techo, trabajo”—sacred rights.

Dialogue is always preferable to confrontation, Cardinal Dolan said. ”[But] my gut also tells me that you can’t negotiate with these people. It could be extraordinarily counterproductive.”

El Salvador’s contemporary death squads do not engage in political liquidation. Their targets have largely been criminal suspects or innocent bystanders caught up in the violence.