Questions for Candidates in a Crucial Election
Given the degree to which American politics has deteriorated into barrages of sound-bites, it may seem quixotic — perhaps even idiotic — to indulge my biennial habit of proposing Questions
An Anniversary of Consequence
On June 30, 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Harris v. McRae and upheld the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, which had prohibited federal funding for Medicaid
What Gettysburg Means
My home is a forty-five minute drive from Gettysburg National Military Park, a site I've visited many times, never without some emotion. The nature of that emotion crystallized for me
An Immigration Debate Primer
It's hard to imagine a more depressing spectacle in contemporary American public life than the immigration reform “debate.” What a friend who's bailing out of the mainstream media recently deplored
The Cardinal Among the Latter-Day Saints
The three years of service that Cardinal Francis George of Chicago has given the Church as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have been a great blessing.
What JFK Wrought at Houston
Sandro Magister's “Chiesa” [Church] newsletter (available at http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it) is an indispensable resource for anyone seriously following the major debates within the Catholic Church, the ideas shaping the pontificate of Benedict
Scandal-Time, Once More
Reports of the clerical sexual abuse of the young in Europe — and the gross mishandling of these cases by bishops, including connivance in cover-ups — ignited a media firestorm
What Went Wrong
Throughout what U.S. Catholics called the “Long Lent” of 2002, when every week seemed to bring revelations of clerical sexual abuse and its mishandling by the church’s bishops, some observers
Church Gets an Unfair Rap
Whether the victim is a kidnapped sex slave in Thailand, a trafficked child camel jockey in the Persian Gulf states, or a fifth grader assaulted in an American elementary school,
The Erosion of Religious Freedom
Connoisseurs of political kamikaze runs will long debate what finished off Martha Coakley in the recent Massachusetts election to fill the seat Edward M. Kennedy held for 47 years. The
The Many Moral Questions in Health Care Reform
The Catholic Church in the United States has done a public service during the recent health care debate by keeping a crucial proposition in play: no reform should reverse the
The Just-War Tradition
In November, the president of the United States ordered a surge of U.S. forces into Afghanistan and called on other countries to do their duty in bringing that war to
Popular Articles
Gaia, False Gods, and Public Policy
An American Argument, a European Revolution