Last week I invoked the memory of Msgr John Tracy Ellis the great Church historian who was my mentor Whenever Msgr rsquo s memory comes to my mind it tends to stay there and this weekend found me seeing contemporary events in the Church through the clarifying lens of history Clemens August Dr

The news of Justice David Souter rsquo s retirement adds another challenging task to President Obama rsquo s already full plate There is any number of qualified candidates so the challenge is merely a political one Everyone seems to think Obama will choose a woman I agree that women often bring a

Politics makes for some strange bedfellows But nothing in recent memory is stranger than the emerging alliance between a group of activist evangelicals and former Cold War statesmen in support of an effort to eliminate nuclear weapons Entirely Earlier this week the group Two Futures introduced i

The University of Notre Dame has announced that this year s Laetare Address will be given by Judge John Noonan who received the Laetare Medal in 1984 The announcement is not yet on the website but I will provide a link as soon as it is Update Here is the link

President Obama has completed his first 100 days The calendar has always seemed an odd way to connote significance but time is a thing we humans have long enjoyed measuring so I suppose it is as good a marker as any for assessing the new Chief Magistrate If you read only the statements by some Ame

Not since Paul fell from his horse on the way to Damascus has a conversion caused so much comment and consternation as Sen Arlen Specter rsquo s decision to bolt the Republican Party and run for re-election next year as a Democrat The consequences are immediate and not all of them are welcome The

The guy I campaigned for didn rsquo t make it but we rsquo ve got a great President hellip and we rsquo ve got a lot of areas where we can work together With these words former Ambassador to the Holy See Thomas Melady during George H W Bush rsquo s presidency kicked off a panel discussion Cat

Wow Mention I-95 and you get a lot of comments So I will stay on the topic for another day address some of the issues raised in my post last Friday and bring up another idea The current car-train permits Snowbirds to bring their cars from the DC area to Florida where they spend the winter an

I am posting early because as you read this Friday morning I will be somewhere on that great American nightmare known as I-95 It is still early in the season of course but in another month I-95 will take up its summer job and become a parking lot of stalled traffic all along the Northeast Corri

Last Friday the National Institutes of Health issued new regulations governing embryonic stem cell research They are better than many expected and the anticipated outcry from Catholic circles has not materialized In fact most of the criticism of the guidelines is coming from the research communi