C. S. Lewis compared the risen life to the lightness of an early summer morning when we feel one with sunlight and the gentle air. Of such a morning he wrote in The Weight of Glory, We do not want merely to see beauty...we want to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into

Crippling debt burdens accumulated over the past several decades still weigh heavily on many of the world’s poorest countries. As they struggle to repay what they owe to rich countries and financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they find themselves with

Glaciers are disappearing; Antarctic ice shelves are collapsing; the Greenland ice cap is eroding; the Arctic winter has grown shorter; and polar sea ice is thinner. Penguins are deprived of nesting areas, and polar bears are losing breeding grounds. Across the Northern Hemisphere, flora and fauna a

The United States today can be likened to a party of travelers in danger - in the path of a forest fire, for instance, or tossed about in a stormy sea. To survive they must make the right moves -find a road that leads out of the woods or discover a harbor that provides shelter. That means they must

As the search for housing by poor people grows more desperate year by year, the phrase lack of affordable housing has assumed a mantra-like quality. The title of a recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach, in itself tells the story: the cost of rental housing is indee

As expected, President George W. Bush used his State of the Union address to praise the successful election in Iraq and argue for his private investment model of Social Security reform. The Iraqi election certainly merits great attention. The images of long lines of people waiting to vote, even retu

"Put not your trust in princes," the Psalmist advises. Friendly Israeli civil servants have given similar advice to Catholics dealing with today’s Israeli politicians. Given the recent history of relations between the church and the Israeli government, it is a counsel born of hard ex

Shortly after his re-election, President Bush said: Hey, were going to reform Social Security, and I really mean it this time. He also wants to move quickly. In mid-January he told reporters that he wants his proposed reforms to be approved by Congress within the first five months of this year. To t

Despite high-profile death sentences like Scott Peterson’s in California, public support for the death penalty is falling. The reasons lie partly in mounting evidence that innocent people have been condemned andin some casesput to death. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said in

The scandal of torture and abuse symbolized by Abu Ghraib took a turn for the better at the end of last year with news of a Justice Department draft memorandum reaffirming the responsibilities of the United States under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. After a succession of