There is a season for everythingfor planting and building, and for uprooting and tearing down. The protesters who swarmed through the streets of Washington, D.C., over the weekend of April 14-16, during the meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, seemed more interested in tear

The shooting of a 6-year old girl by a 6-year-old classmate in Flint, Mich., was followed a few weeks later by a 12-year-old’s holding his class hostage with a loaded semiautomatic pistol in Lisbon, Ohio. Events like these, coming so soon after the massacre and suicides at the Columbine High S

St. Augustine was probably not the first, and he was certainly not the last to remark that even pagans believe that Jesus died. It is only Christians who believe that after death he rose to a new life. The joy that is awakened by this belief in the Resurrection is not supposed to be just a seasonal

In his historic visit to the Holy Land, Pope John Paul II once again captured the imagination of the world. The stooped figure in white with shaking hands somehow projected a strength beyond reason, a spiritual strength that came from an absolute faith in his mission to proclaim God’s love and

Al Smith and John F. Kennedy must be enjoying a good chuckle as they watch Democrats and Republicans engage in finger-pointing about anti-Catholicism. Though at one time being Catholic was a liability when running for national office, now candidates try to outdo each other by professing their abhorr

"There has been no vocal, effective, reliable and consistent constituency for Africa in this country," complained Leonard H. Robinson Jr., a deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan and Bush administrations. "Africa needs all the friends it can get in Amer

In the first Sunday of Lent, Pope John Paul II asked forgiveness for sins committed by Catholics over the last two millennia. For 20 minutes he listed and prayed about sins against various groups, including Jews and Muslims. "Christians have often denied the Gospel; yielding to a mentality of p

In what may signal a crack in the wall of support for the death penalty, a number of states have begun to question whether it can ever be fairly applied. Illinois provides the most dramatic example. Since 1977, 13 men have been released from its death row. One, Anthony Porter, came within two days o

Located 80 miles east of Havana on Cuba’s northern coast, the city of Cárdenas, from which young Elián Gonzalez comes, is a relatively poor but bustling and friendly town of some 40,000one of those places where you instantly sense that everyone knows everyone else. It’s a place of huma

Although the architecture of its cathedral is Neo-Byzantine, the affairs of the Archdiocese of Westminster have usually been conducted in a straightforward English manner, appropriate to its setting between Victoria Station and New Scotland Yard. So the 4.1 million Catholics in England and Wales wer