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

Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, is a decorated veteran, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a longtime hawk on defense matters. So Washington had a rude awakening when he declared on Nov. 17 that the time had come for the United States to withdraw its troops from

Botanists in a greenhouse can cross a white flower with a red flower and raise generations of pink flowers that do not revert to red or white. This experiment provides a tiny example of evolution, but it provokes no debate because it was observed happening. The situation was different in 1859, when

Mean-spiritedthat is the only way to describe the budget cuts proposed by the House of Representatives. They are not only deep; their impact will be felt most by the very people who are least able to sustain them, namely, the poorest: low-income working parents, the elderly, children and legal immig

On June 26, 1997, at least 47 states had laws banning assisted suicides. These laws were aimed mainly at physicians who prescribed lethal medicines for patients who wanted to end their lives because of their great miseries. In two states, Washington and New York, those bans had been overruled by low

The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, complained bitterly that it was a political stunt. He was referring to the invocation by the minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, of Senate rules to call the body into secret session to discuss the failure of the Senate Int

The logjam of denials about the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. detention sites in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo has finally been broken. Capt. Ian Fishback’s letter in September to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, has cleared the way for steps that may at last establish