How Bad Policies Brought Us a New Gilded Age

Any time the Obama administration touches issues related to the Catholic Church, it seems to get itself caught in a rhetorical and moral crossfire that leaves all involved wounded and angry. This is what's happening in the battle over how contraception should be covered under the new health-care law.

Should the president of the United States be able to authorize the assassination of a U.S. citizen anywhere in the world without telling the public why—or even acknowledging that he has done so? The question is not theoretical. On September 30 a missile fired from an unmanned drone aircraft operated by the CIA killed two American citizens in Yemen.

Peacebuilding is the fruit of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, an affiliation of scholars, practitioners, and institutions. It is concrete, pastoral, conceptually challenging, and provides many practical suggestions.

Coming of age in East Germany

There was much in Obama’s speech announcing the killing of Osama bin Laden—and in the scenes of chanting and jubilant flag-waving across the country that followed—that ought to give Christians, and not only pacifists such as myself, great pause.

The U.S. government faces few challenges more important than renewing people’s trust in the honesty and fairness of our financial institutions and economic system.

If you’re a fan of the History Channel, you’ll feel right at home watching Robert Redford’s recreation of Abraham Lincoln’s murder near the beginning of The Conspirator.

We’re still debating whether what we’re doing in Libya can rightly be described as war, though bombs dropped amid an “intervention” are just as deadly. But where’s the debate over whether it’s fair or accurate to assert that Republicans in Congress have not-so-stealthily declared a “war on women”?

What budget cuts can tell us

A review of Ourselves Unborn, by Sara Dubow

What can we do to prevent another Tucson?

When the paper trail disappears

When a patient arrives in extremis at a Catholic hospital in the rare situation reflected in the case of the Arizona woman whose life was endangered by her pregnancy, a conflict arises between the patient’s life and Catholic health care’s right to religious liberty in following its own precepts.

Lisa Sowle Cahill’s middle way

It’s in vogue to ask what the Internet is doing to our brains. Will constant exposure to technology destroy human memory and attention span? Are students really learning if they’re taking notes on their laptops, but keeping Facebook and e-mail windows open simultaneously, and also surreptitiously texting on their cell phones?

The ethics & economics of slum tours

What was Pius XII's opinion of the Jews?

Christopher Lasch & the American predicament

A short & unfinished history 

Liberals may lament the administration’s failure to make progress on immigration and climate-change legislation in this congressional session, but it may be time to shift energies to protecting what has already been passed. 

From the archives: our editorial decrying the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Andrew Linzey was among the first to open up the field of “animal theology." This book is neither his best nor his most original work, but it is still worth recommending to anyone unfamiliar with his arguments.

Might the USCCB be wrong about the health-care law?

Extending the argument against sex-selective abortion

It will take some time before a new array of justices on the Court rethinks the labored departure from precedent made by the majority in Citizens United. Meanwhile, much corporate mischief will have been done.

A review of the book On Evil

A profile of the ethicist Gilbert Meilaender

Arizonans have plenty to be anxious about, but indulging in a crude nativism won’t stop the flow of undocumented immigrants or prevent violent crime along the border.

Among elected officials, journalists, and average citizens, intensifying partisan polarization is thought to be one of the dominant political trends of our times. Yet it has proved remarkably controversial among political scientists.

Stanley Hauerwas & the Christian Difference

The New York Times's worldview is secularist and secularizing, and as such it rivals the Catholic worldview. But what makes the Times unique is that it is not just the nation's self-appointed newspaper of record. It is, to paraphrase Chesterton, an institution with the soul of a church.