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I'd like to continue the discussion of parallels between 19th century attacks on Catholicism and current Islamophobia by
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About a thousand people attended today's Catholic League demonstration against the owner of the Empire State
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Pope John Paul II's name is being used by many commentators to support their attacks against the Islamic center proposed for a building two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The pope had agreed to withdraw a convent near Auschwitz, as William McGurn pointed out in an Aug. 3 Wall Street
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Or so the novelist, who had returned to the Catholicism of her childhood, said on her Facebook fan page. Her explanation:
"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be
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President Obama touted his education policies today in a speech at the 100th anniversary convention of the National Urban League. His much-hyped "Race to the Top" still sounds to me more like a TV reality program than a program that will advance education. It invests heavily in funding
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A federal judge has issued an injunction that bars some of the most controversial aspects of Arizona's immigration law from taking effect. The ruling preserves parts of the law, however. The law, challenged by the Obama administration, has been described by Cardinal Roger Mahony as "
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I'm back from a vacation in Assisi, where I spent some time at the various sites that are steeped in the generous spirit of St. Francis. Against that
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The Vatican is stepping up its condemnation of an extraordinary raid by Belgian law enforcement authorities to search for evidence that clergy sexual abuse was covered up. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said that the detention of bishops for questioning smacked of communist governments' practices. The
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It is almost amusing to read that Catholic League prez Bill Donohue doesn't care that the speaker of New York's City Council, Christine Quinn, is a lesbian who vigorously supports same-sex marriage. He announced on the steps of City Hall that she is "a very good Catholic," The Daily News'
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The Missionaries of Charity have created a Web page devoted to the upcoming centenary of Mother Teresa's birth, which will be celebrated on August 26. It's an island of calm that features, among other things, a recording of Mother Teresa reciting the Prayer of St. Francis.
The prayer, though
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On another thread, there is a lively discussion about the Catholic League that concerns, among other things, the salary of its president. His $372,501 salary for 2008 is known because the Catholic League, as a non-profit, must file a Form 990 with the IRS. Such documents are public and available on
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A friar who worked as a chaplain at New York's Ground Zero site has brought a much-needed Franciscan response to those who argue that a mosque and Islamic center should not be permitted two blocks from the place where the World Trade Center once stood.
"Bring the spirit of the Assisi
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In the midst of a corruption scandal in New York City government in the 1980s, one of the reporters at the newspaper where I worked did a profile of a lobbyist who was closely tied to a corrupt politician. It was one of those articles you do when you haven't been able to get the goods on someone,
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Former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato has a letter to the editor in today's New York Times in which he reports that "As a Catholic, I am appalled at the now-daily assaults by the liberal media against the church." An editor's note adds that D'Amato is "a member of the board of the
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I hope that the many church officials who are embracing the idea of turning failing Catholic schools into taxpayer-funded charter schools read this interview Sam Freedman did with education expert Diane Ravitch in The New York Times today:
Her criticism of charter schools ... arises partly from a
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I was wondering when the public editor at The New York Times, Clark Hoyt, would deal with the avalanche of criticism over the paper's stories that examined Pope Benedict XVI's handling of clergy sexual abuse cases. Now, he has. He concludes:
Like it or not, there are circumstances that have
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A smart public-relations strategy could never solve a problem as serious as the cover-up of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, but it would at least make Catholics and the public at large a little more confident in the management ability and good intentions of the present church
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The New York Times ran a story during the past week noting that "a Brooklyn man" had been sentenced to up to 32 years in prison for sexually abusing a 16-year-old. In the story, The Times noted that the defendant, Baruch Lebovits, "is often referred to as `Rabbi' as a sign of respect
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The Archdiocese of Indianapolis has announced that it will convert two Catholic schools into publicly funded charter schools - but will continue to run them itself through a corporation it controls. The decision to retain control of the schools - absent religious trappings - is a first (The
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Hundreds of people took part today in Pax Christi-Metro New York's 27th annual Good Friday Way of the Cross along 42nd Street through Times Square. The surrounding cacophony always heightens the prayerful intensity of these socially conscious Stations of the Cross. Torture, appropriately (
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George Weigel's column on the First Things blog summarizes the case being made in many quarters that The New York Times has been biased in its recent coverage of Pope Benedict's handling of cases of clergy sexual abuse. He writes:
"... the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost
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I 've been enjoying a Lenten journey on the Camino de Santiago - vicariously, that is, by following some pilgrims' progress through their daily reports on BustedHalo.com. The interviews, photos, video and music really bring the experience of hiking northern Spain's thousand-year-old
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Returning to a subject he wrote about early in his career, Pope Benedict spoke at his weekly audience about how St. Bonaventure firmly responded to heretical ideas he encountered within the Franciscan order when he served as its minister general starting in 1257. The problem Bonaventure faced was
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It is the teaching of the church to "avoid every kind of unjust discrimination" against those who are gay or lesbian. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," according to The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
So I don't see how the Archdiocese of
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The push is on in Washington this week to put more federal money into the charter-school movement. That may be good news for parents whose children are in substandard public schools, but it's bad news for Catholic schools, which are losing enrollment to the publicly funded charter schools.
The
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Education authorities in Georgia took what apparently is a very unusual step: They made some routine checks to see if there was cheating on standardized reading tests. They found that cheating might have occurred at 1 in 5 schools, The New York Times reports.
The same paper also reported
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After 9/11 it became an article of faith in New York City that we must resume normal lives and not let terrorists win by drastically altering our ways. There was a down side to that - for example, the environmental hazards of the attack were not addressed properly. But overall, it worked, and New
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[caption id="attachment_6511" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Francis and the Sultan, by Arnoldo Zocchi, 1909. "][/caption]
Back in September, Commonweal carried an article [registration required] I wrote about the encounter in 1219 between
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Which Biblical verses should be cited on the gunsights of the M4 and M16 rifles that American soldiers are using in Iraq and Afghanistan? That's right. The Michigan company making the gunsights has been putting Biblical citations on them, as in John 8:12 ("I am the light of the world.
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A study from Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that real "news" - that is, something new, and not just recycled - is reported almost entirely by traditional media, especially newspapers. The study of news reporting in Baltimore for the week of July 19-25
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Earlier this week, there were news reports about a study finding that the threat of "homegrown" Islamist terrorism is often exaggerated. The study was funded by the Justice Department and conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. Time reported:
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The New York Times carried a moving story today about two hospitalized children - an Israeli boy severely wounded by a Hamas rocket, and a Palestinian girl
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Twenty-five years ago today, on December 22, 1984, when I was in my second month as a reporter for New York Newsday, I was sent out to check on a report from police that four people had been shot on the subway. There were several detectives in the subway station where the train stopped, and I was
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Federal data released today show a very sharp increase in the number of criminal immigration cases the U.S. Department of Justice is prosecuting - up 16 percent in fiscal year 2009. As a result, federal prosecutions overall are at an all-time high.
An analysis from the Transactional Records
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A great deal of attention was paid when allegations of sexual abuse were made seven years ago against a former vice-chancellor of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Monsignor Alan Placa, over an incident that allegedly occurred 34 years ago. It should not go unnoticed that the Vatican has found him
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I recently posted on government misuse of the power of eminent domain, and return to that subject now with news of a startling appeals court ruling that would bar use of eminent domain to help Columbia University expand in upper Manhattan. Having written about development issues in New York on and
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To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us --- and He has given us everything ...
So goes this week's reflection from The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living, which seems to find just the right quote from Thomas Merton every week.
Happy
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The debate continues over whether the news media downplayed suggestions that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood gunman, is an Islamist terrorist. Critics such as columnists David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer had said there was too much focus on whether Hasan was mentally ill, what Brooks
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There are some interesting comments from the ChicagoTribune.com, U.S. Catholic and National Catholic Reporter about what a statement by Cardinal Francis George means for Catholic media and, by the way, what it might mean to Commonweal. Here is what the cardinal said in opening remarks at the recent
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I don't know if the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who allowed the
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We in New York are at this hour surprised to learn that we've actually had an interesting mayoral race. Our billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, spent what will probably amount to $100 million to assure that there would be absolutely no suspense on election night over his prospects for securing a
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As chairman of the bishops' committee that drafted the statement "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," Brooklyn's Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio has had an important role in interpreting what it actually means. In the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign, he wrote in a letter to The
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A press release from the University of Florida reports on an interesting new study that contradicts the "God gap" theory in American politics - the widely accepted idea that religious, white Christians are conservatives who favor the Republican Party.
The study found that prior
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The Republican Party posed this question in its weekly video and radio address, no doubt hoping it will resonate much like Ronald Reagan's effective question to voters in the 1980 presidential campaign, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
For Catholics, this
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Elsewhere on this site, a debate rages on a newspaper's religion coverage. I would like to report on an interesting addition to the world of religion journalism, one that takes important steps to filling the large gap in coverage of things Catholic. A Web site that started over the summer called
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Last weekend, it was announced in all parishes in the Diocese of Brooklyn that communion would not be given from the cup for the remainder of the swine flu season ... Just wondering how this is being handled elsewhere. Is there a "no touch" policy for the kiss of peace? And are there any
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The New York Times carried a profile today of Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old man suspected of a terrorism conspiracy. I admire the way Michael Wilson wrote the piece because it reflects a humility often missing in news coverage: Although the piece is well-reported, it makes clear that
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The White House has posted the prepared remarks President Obama is to give in his school speech. It's what any rational person would have expected from Obama - a return to his basic theme of personal responsibility. Here is a typical passage:
I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for
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Who says newspapers report only the bad news? The Washington Post has marked the start of Ramadan with an interesting story about how the growing Muslim community in northern Virginia is finding worship space inside synagogues.
Will the Ramadan story become a staple in religion news coverage in
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The Leadership Conference of Women Religious has issued a statement [.PDF] objecting to the fact that church authorities will not disclose who has funded a Vatican investigation of women religious in the United States.
Comments the apostolic visitator, Mother Mary Clare Millea, made to Catholic
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The New York Times' Paul Vitello took a look back this week on the Catholic bishops' lobbying campaign that averted proposed New York state legislation to open the door to many more lawsuits over sexual abuse of children. It turned out that some of the Assembly members who voted for the bill in
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Are opponents of health care reform trying to help scuttle the Obama plan by steering it into the rocky shoals of the abortion debate? Catholic Charities USA, outspoken in calling for Congress to enact health care reform, seemed to say as much in a statement it issued in response to "
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In an interview with Britain's Sunday Telegraph, the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, expressed concerns over social networking Web sites such as Facebook and My Space:
"I think there's a worry that an excessive use or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a
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The Washington Post has created a beat on its metro desk for a reporter to cover nonpublic schools. Michael Birnbaum, the reporter, told me he doesn't know of anyone else covering such a beat. Neither do I.
It's an admirable decision by The Post, especially in light of the financial pressures on
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A federal appeals court has struck down a lower-court ruling that allowed pharmacies in the state of Washington not to sell the Plan B "morning after" drug for reasons of conscience. Prodded by the governor, Planned Parenthood and the state's Human Rights Commission, state pharmacy
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I wasn't expecting any theology when I went to see the new version of The Taking of Pelham 123. But in a very deliberate way, the film early on sets up the
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It's odd that the State Department didn't make a public announcement when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed a new envoy this week to represent the United States among Muslims. The appointment of Kashmir-born U.S. diplomat Farah Pandith follows up on President Obama's Cairo speech.
As
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In a short interview published in The Washington Post this weekend, scholar Barbara Perry spoke about her research for a book concerning the history of Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court. She notes that Justice William Brennan said in a 1985 interview with her that his was indeed a "
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The New York Times today set out the unfortunate story of how the U.S. bishops' spokesman on domestic policy ousted a priest who was highly effective as a housing organizer from his job as head of a Brooklyn housing advocacy organization.
The priest, Father Jim O'Shea, a Passionist, had done a
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I've spent the past few years working on a book (due out in September) about Francis of Assisi's encounter with the sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, during the Fifth Crusade in 1219. So I've followed President Obama's speech in Cairo in that context.
The research took me to Egypt, where I
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Father Alberto Cutié, the media-savvy priest who just recently defended priestly celibacy after being photographed in close quarters with a woman friend, joined the Episcopal Church today so that he can eventually become a married priest, church officials announced.
The fact that it was
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New York is abuzz with the frightening news that an FBI-NYPD task force has arrested four suspects who allegedly planted what they thought were bombs near a synagogue and a Jewish community center. The suspects were initially said to have converted to Islam in prison, a widespread practice.
This
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One difference between Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2000 and Pope Benedict's visit over the past week is that Benedict's homilies and speeches are translated into Arabic on the Vatican Web site. In retrospect, it seems obvious, since that's the language of the local Christian
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An editorial in America makes a notable contribution to the debate over the University of Notre Dame's decision to invite President Obama to speak on campus and to honor him. It contains this reality check:
The divisive effects of the new American sectarians have not escaped the notice of the
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Nicholas Kristof writes today about a conference just held at Notre Dame, "The Quran in its Historical Context":
“We’re experiencing right now in Koranic studies a rise of interest analogous to the rise of critical Bible studies in the 19th century,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, a
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I have never been to Times Square for New Year's Eve, but have been there several times on Good Friday. Here are some photos from the Stations of the Cross as they were enacted by Pax Christi and friends along Manhattan's 42nd Street. Above, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, who leads the Vatican
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I thought the Times of London might be pulling an early April Fool's Day prank with its report on Friday, "Medieval Monk Hailed by Obama Was a Heretic, says Vatican." But apparently the paper is serious - ANSA also carried a report on Father Raniero Cantalamessa's claim that Barack
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The Diocese of Brooklyn's Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio is planning to take New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg up on his offer to turn some Catholic schools into publicly funded charter schools. That would make Brooklyn the second diocese to take such a step, after the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C
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News reports note that Pope Benedict XVI will enter the Dome of the Rock when he visits Jerusalem in May. If so, this will be an instance in which Benedict ventures a little further than Pope John Paul II did in relations with Muslims - John Paul stood outside the shrine when he visited Jerusalem
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In its extensive coverage of the appointment of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to head the New York archdiocese, the New York Times takes note of the departing Cardinal Edward Egan's complaint that the news media distorted his public image:
Cardinal Egan blames the media for what he considers major
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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn have announced that they are exploring whether to convert a number of Catholic schools in danger of closing into publicly funded charter schools in which religion could not be taught. During a news conference in City Hall,
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According to news reports, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is enveloped in a federal grand jury investigation involving its handling of priests who sexually abused minors. Other prosecutors have conducted similar investigations and brought no charges. But in this case, the U.S. attorney in Los
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A lot of smart people have tried to figure out the elusive formula for achieving peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Research by two social scientists, outlined in an op-ed article in today's New York Times, finds that financial compensation or even massive economic development aid alone
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Barack Obama gave a "purpose-driven" speech at his inaugural today, one aimed at rallying Americans to set aside self-interest in favor of the common good. There was some fine oratory and it hit the right note. But to me, the most inspiring passage of the ceremony belonged to poet
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For an on-the-ground feel for what the war in Gaza has wrought, I recommend the blog of Caritas Internationalis, the international Catholic relief organization. The site helps to fill gaps in the news coverage left by Israel's refusal to allow foreign correspondents in to Gaza. Among the posts:
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I am struck by the contrasting portrayal of Catholic priests in the last two movies I've seen - Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" and John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt" - and wondered what thoughts others might have on this.
Each film starts with the priest delivering a
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Sarah Palin, the first candidate for national office with a journalism degree, continues to stoke the easily heated embers of resentment against the news media. In an interview on YouTube, she was asked to compare the way the news media covered her with the treatment Caroline Kennedy has gotten in
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The Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenuda III, that is. "Phoning it in" is, of course, slang for doing something halfway. According to an AFP news-service dispatch, the pope decided the faithful shouldn't be phoning it in when it comes to penance. His objection was based on privacy grounds:
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Photo: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Among newspaper and television news reporters, the task of doing a story about how a religious holiday is celebrated ranks only a little above doing a stakeout outside the house of a murder victim's mother. The editors' main purpose sometimes
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A survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has some interesting numbers on how Catholics view other religions. A substantial majority (62 percent) of white Catholics answered "yes" to the question of whether Islam can lead to eternal life, a figure well above the
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The Bush administration's proposal to expand health workers' right to avoid participating in performing abortions advanced this week, according to ProPublica.org (a non-profit investigative reporting site that deserves to be checked regularly).
While the article has some of the buzzwords we
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Two New York Times reporters, Eric Lipton and Raymond Hernandez, do a masterful job in today's paper of showing how the influential Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) helped fund Democrats' drive to win control of the Senate by encouraging policies that contributed to the collapse of the economy.
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The Christian Science Monitor has a thoughtful article on whether the proposed Freedom of Choice Act would negate conscience clauses that protect hospitals and doctors from having to do abortions. Ben Arnoldy writes:
Some say FOCA is so broad it would also imperil "conscience clauses"
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Pope Benedict XVI is planning a trip to Israel and the West Bank - possibly for the second week in May, according to Haaretz. It's still under negotiation, but just the possibility of it is a reminder of how much the world has changed since John Paul II made his pilgrimage there in March, 2000,
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Big 3 automakers have certainly made a terrible mess of things, but the debate over saving them reflects a double standard that often works to the detriment of blue-collar industries and, more importantly, their blue-collar employees. There is a bias among economic-development policymakers and
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The day shouldn't pass without the headline above appearing somewhere - I suspect it will be a dotCommonweal exclusive. Joe Biden was the forgotten "first" in a campaign that featured candidates who all were potential "firsts," be it for race, gender, age or, in the
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Although all eyes here are on the presidential election, it is worth noting that an important three-day Catholic-Muslim forum is set to start in Vatican City next Tuesday. The Muslim-born journalist Pope Benedict XVI baptized last Easter has done his best to keep it from succeeding by urging the
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New York City's voters approved referenda by substantial margins in 1993 and 1996 that limited their elected officials to two terms in office. Today, members of the City Council voted to undo the voters' will, giving Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, for that matter, themselves, the right to seek a
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The gates of heaven won't be barred to Pius XII if the Vatican decides to put his cause for sainthood on hold. But Pope Benedict XVI and others in the Vatican keep putting it forward even though it divides Catholics and Jews. Most recently, the postulator for Pius' cause was quoted in Italian media
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The leader of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, seems to be facing some dissent within the ranks over his politicking in the presidential race. A group calling itself "Knights for Obama" has set up a Web page "responding to those who have tarnished the great reputation of the
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I don't know if it makes the Republicans' point, but Deal Hudson notes that ACORN got more than $1 million in aid from the U.S. Catholic bishops' Campaign for Human Development last year. Hudson's attack on ACORN comes as the Republican Party is tarring the community activist organization as part
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Diocesan newspapers are fond of accusing the mainstream news media of bias, and at times they are right. But what about the diocesan papers?
I'd like to ask if your diocesan newspaper is reporting fairly on the presidential campaign. Or has it strongly suggested through its choice of stories,
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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is poised to announce that he will run for a third term - which means that he will first have to sign a law that dismantles a term limits statute New York City's voters approved twice. He'll do it after a vote by City Council members who are similarly eager to keep
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Wire fraud. Obstruction of justice. False statements.
News accounts of the damaging report [in .pdf] that Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine issued Monday on the firing of nine U.S. attorneys should definitely include those words - the criminal laws the IG said may have been
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The political foolhardiness of the the theologizing that Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi did concerning abortion comes through loud and clear in a New York Times piece today, `Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes.' The writer, David Kirkpatrick, sets the scene nicely with interviews at Holy
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I stopped short on this headline on a Religion New Service story: Poll shows support for torture among Southern evangelicals. The story was about a poll released in Atlanta at a conference Evangelicals for Human Rights co-sponsored. It said that 57 percent of the white evangelicals interviewed
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When Rudolph Giuliani was mayor of New York, he went to war with community gardeners, of all people. So the mocking comments he made at the Republican convention about Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer are in character. Sarah Palin is picking up where Giuliani left off (as she
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There was a good read in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday on the Vatican's plan to erect a statue of Galileo. As the Journal put it, his 1633 trial and conviction "may be the Vatican's biggest public-relations debacle." Now, it adds, the Catholic Church will build "a monument
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The damage control has already begun for John McCain's possible choice of a pro-choice Catholic as his vice-presidential nominee. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a possible nominee, had this exchange with Chris Wallace on Fox News on Sunday:
WALLACE: Governor, have you talked with McCain
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Today is the Feast of St. James, the apostle who was son of Zebedee and brother of John. I got back recently from a journey on the Camino de Santiago, the network of medieval pilgrimage trails leading to James' supposed tomb in northwestern Spain, and filed this report at BustedHalo.com.
The
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Jim Romenesko's media news Web site has long since turned into a cascade of bad news about the newspaper business - contributing to low morale in many a newsroom. So it's almost newsworthy that the site has linked to an article that says newspaper circulation is up.
Globally, that is. Sacramento
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That's the latest word from The Associated Press in Rome, where the City Council has ordered a 50-euro fine for the offense of snacking near the Eternal City's monuments. So forget about wandering over to the Trevi Fountain with that drippy cup of gelato. That pleasure is now outside the law.
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Pope Benedict XVI would like every Catholic parish in the world to offer the Tridentine Mass. Parishes would offer catechism classes to train Catholics to worship at the Tridentine Mass every Sunday, and help them to understand the theology behind this ritual. But the pope is not looking to return
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By the way, the NBC-Wall Street Journal Poll showed Barack Obama well ahead of John McCain among Catholic voters. Mark Silk notes on the blog Spiritual Politics that it's because Obama is so far ahead with Hispanics (while McCain is apparently ahead , by a smaller margin, among non-Hispanic
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Rather than waffle on his stated intent to talk with Hamas and other enemies, Barack Obama would do well to focus more on explaining why such talks are necessary. Mohamad Bazzi, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Middle East bureau chief of Newsday (where we worked together),
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The New York Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, has done an admirable job of dissecting military historian Edward Luttwak's reckless May 12 column suggesting that Muslims may view Barack Obama as an apostate. By seeking opinions from five experts on Islamic law, Hoyt has answered many of the
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More than 100 nations have agreed at an international conference in Dublin to ban cluster bombs, with Great Britain joining in despite U.S. opposition. While the Pentagon contended anew that cluster bombs are needed to protect American soldiers, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the
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Pope Benedict XVI has come up with some excellent advice for journalism professors: to teach their students to be skeptical, but not cynical. Catholic News Service reports that he told a group of journalism profs that "a certain methodological skepticism" can be especially helpful in
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Who says the TV networks don't pay attention to what religious leaders say? They've been scrutinizing the statements of two of Sen. John McCain's supporters, much as they did for that other minister associated with Barack Obama.
McCain now has rejected endorsements from the Rev. John Hagee and
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The United States is a no-show at an international conference in Dublin this week that aims to ban cluster bombs. But Pope Benedict XVI has endorsed the gathering, which was called together out of frustration with the pace of the slow-moving diplomatic talks the U.S. advocates. He said he hopes
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The Vatican's view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets too little attention from Catholics in the United States. With that in mind, here are some comments Pope Benedict XVI made on Monday as he welcomed the new Israeli ambassador to the Holy See with a request that more be done to help
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Picking up on an issue that seems to move to the foreground in presidential election years, the archbishop of Kansas City, Kans., has told Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic, not to receive communion. He was reacting to her recent veto of anti-abortion legislation. The Kansas City Star
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Mark Sticherz notes on the GetReligion blog, that daily exposé of how the news media doesn't "get religion," that news organizations did not give much attention to the Catholic vote in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. For the record, exit polls showed Catholics went for Clinton
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So asks Time magazine - quoting Commonweal to help make its point
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The Times' Andrea Elliott has a strong piece on the controversy surrounding an Arab-themed public school in New York City, describing the anti-Muslim media campaign that drove out the woman who was supposed to be its first principal, Debbie Almontaser. (As noted in a post last month, Almontaser, a
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In an interesting dispatch from Nairobi, the Zenit news agency describes a speech in which Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran outlined Pope Benedict XVI's new direction in interreligious dialogue. He said that previous popes have built "bridges of understanding" to other religions, and that
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Like some of my fellow journalists who contribute to dotCommonweal, I've been blogging on the papal visit (for Newsday, at www.pope-newsday.blogspot.com). I was struck by Pope Benedict's use of the windows in St. Patrick's Cathedral as a visual aid in his homily there to make his point about what
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The fact that the “Compassion Forum” interviews with Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama occurred and were aired Sunday night on national television is more interesting than what the two Democratic presidential aspirants actually said. But there is still a lot to consider.
I haven’t
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A speech that Taylor Branch gave recently on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final Sunday sermon, delivered 40 years ago, was adapted into an op-ed piece in The New York Times. The column harks back to the days when newspapers dutifully reported on Sunday sermons. I suppose if the sermons were
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Mikhail Gorbachev recently spent a half hour on his knees in Assisi before the tomb of St. Francis, according to news reports. Whether the former Communist leader was praying or just being an exceptionally thorough tourist is not clear.
The Telegraph, under the headline "Mikhail Gorbachev
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“Hillary’s back; she’s walking the fine line between seeming too tough, not tough enough” - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette headline on Ellen Goodman column, Jan. 11, 2008.
“Obama's toughness could be a question mark for voters” - Associated Press headline, Feb. 4, 2008.
''I have to
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Note to pastors: Pray that no one in your congregation runs for president. Zachary Roth writes in Columbia Journalism Review that while it's good that reporters have scrutinized the controversial statements of Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it's too bad they haven't given similar
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New York state's Catholic bishops had a long-awaited appointment with Gov. Eliot Spitzer at the state Capitol in Albany on Monday at 3 p.m. to protest his pending abortion rights legislation. For some reason, it kept getting put off, and Cardinal Edward Egan and fellow bishops were left to
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For all of her complaints about news coverage of the presidential campaign, I think Hillary Clinton has done fairly well with it. Her loss of 12 straight states could well have been enough of a public relations disaster to force her from the race. Anticipating that, her campaign came out of Super
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Martin Sheen is getting plenty of recognition for his human rights work: He will receive Pax Christi Metro New York's 2008 Peacemaker award on Palm Sunday, March 16. So will Debbie Almontaser. And therein lies the story.
Almontaser, a Muslim who migrated to New York from Yemen at the age of 3,
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