As a new academic year begins, generalizations about American Catholic elementary and secondary education are risky, because there are signs both of losses and gains. Losses because with the closing of many financially strapped schools the system is smaller than it once was. Forty years ago, the pop

When world leaders gathered at the United Nations five years ago to promulgate their Millennium Declaration, they pledged their nations to a global partnership aimed at cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015. Two years later they met again in Monterrey, Mexico, to develop a framework for undertakin

Abusive labor practices continue to plague workers here and around the worlda circumstance that should give pause to those fortunate enough to earn comfortable incomes for themselves and their families. For many it may come as a surprise that even here in the United States, worker exploitation is pe

In the final week of July 2005, a month darkened by terrorist violence in London, the Irish Republican Army officially declared an end to its armed campaign to eliminate British rule in Northern Ireland. The time had come, the I.R.A. statement said, to pursue a political and democratic path to a uni

A handful of the provisions of the USA Patriot Act are set to expireor sunset on Dec. 31, and Congress is therefore considering which of them to re-authorize. President Bush wants the entire act to be made permanent, contending that it has made the United States safer in the wake of the terrorist at

At the end of its current term, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court issued two judgments and 10 opinions concerning the constitutionality of governmental displays of the Ten Commandments. One judgment upheld the permissibility of the 44-year-old display in the Texas Capitol Park of a six-foot gra

The annual celebrations of Independence Day commemorate not only the sacrifices made during the American Revolution, but also a more nebulous concept: the American dream, which for many is bound up with the promise of economic success for any hardworking American. Yet the American dream is beginning

Since Paul confronted Peter, the church has known diverse tendencies within it.

Immigration reform can go either wayhelping immigrants and asylum seekers or placing further restrictions on their lives by ever more punitive laws. For several years, Congress has been focused on the latter type of legislation. The most current example is the Real ID Act of 2005. Its three parts co

In its decision in the case of Zorach v. Clauson in 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York City program that provided released time for the religious instruction of public school pupils during school hours but apart from public school buildings. The opinion for the 6-to-3 majority was writte