Reality CheckIn recent weeks, plans for school and parish reconfigurations have been disclosed in a number of dioceses. It is reality-check time across much of the Northeast, where changing demographics have occasioned these realignments. However poignant and evocative the stories of my grandmother

Junkyard BoundWhat is good for General Motors, quipped Charles Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce, is good for the nation. As a former chairman of G.M., Wilson was not a disinterested party, but for much of the next half-century, as the auto giant and its employees prospered, so

The United States has enjoyed an extraordinarily long period of economic growth with very little inflation. There have been setbacks caused by high oil prices, the attacks on 9/11 and the dot-com crash, but in general there have not been the wide swings from high inflation to deep recession that wer

Human Rights CouncilThe Human Rights Council of the United Nations has finally become a reality. After months of negotiations, the U.N. General Assembly voted on March 15 to accept a resolution creating a new body to replace the Human Rights Commission, discredited because it granted membership to s

With the February election of René Préval as its new president, Haiti, poorest of countries in the Western Hemisphere, may now have some chance to move into the future with greater hope for peace and economic advancement. Although the election itself was marred by irregularities, Mr. Préval was c

The publication in 1990 of the apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae has been the inspiration for continuing conversation within the Catholic higher education community in the United States. The leadership of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and its member institutions have

Fresh Canadian AirThe Canadian Religious Conference, which represents more than 200 orders of men and women, in January presented to the bishops of Canada an exhaustive analysis of the situation of the church in that country. They outlined points of satisfaction and regret, and provided a wish-list

The announcement on March 3 that President George W. Bush had concluded a nuclear-supply agreement with the government of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was alarming news. What remains of the nuclear nonproliferation regime was already under severe stress from North Korea and Iran. The

Silver Medal Losers?How to explain the disappointing performance of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in the television ratings, the lowest since 1968? Perhaps this year’s Olympic hopefuls were simply too hyped. When everyone is touted as a future gold medalist, anything less is seen as a loss. Or

Continuing EmbarrassmentThe Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba has increasingly become an embarrassment for the United States. In mid-February, a team of five inspectors from the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva issued a lengthy report documenting human rights violations alleged to be ta