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Maybe it was never easy to teach Catholic theology in America, but today a gaggle of new challenges are making it an increasingly complicated enterprise. Across the country, leaders in [...]

To the uninitiated, attempts to describe the congregation at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in tiny Johnson City, Texas, could sound like a routine from a stand-up comedian: 'A white rancher, [...]

Probably the most significant force reshaping the contours of global Catholicism today is the population shift from North to South, from the developed to the developing world, amounting to the [...]

When Holy Cross Fr. John Jenkins became the 17th president of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana last July 2, he inherited two swirling controversies: the fate of 'The [...]

In the highly polarized context of Spanish politics, strong rhetoric is par for the course. Even by that standard, however, the church-state clash that has gripped the country for more [...]

He was a magnificent pope who presided over a controversial pontificate, at turns daring and defensive, inspiring and insular. John Paul II, 263rd successor of St. Peter, leaves behind the [...]

With few exceptions, English-language journalism doesn't take the Vatican terribly seriously. The Vatican press office accredits dozens of English-speaking Rome-based reporters, but most of them spend perhaps 25 percent of [...]

Reporters cover papal trips like the Iowa caucuses, which is to say through the optic of issues and electoral politics. We focus on what the pope says, how 'sharp' or [...]

Virtue and vice can be notoriously hard to distinguish, but in few other spots of the world do they lie cheek by jowl as outside the Crypt of Peter and [...]

Moral doubts balance lure of digital media options DENVER -- An unprecedented gathering of bishops from North and South America and the Vatican, held here March 26-28, pulsed with enthusiasm [...]

Against the backdrop of what many are caring a new 'Great Awakening' in America -- a renewed spiritual hunger, perhaps fueled by millennial stirrings, perhaps by the more prosaic fact [...]

America is worried about the cost of college. Time and Newsweek have run cover stories on the subject, and Congress has created a commission to has created a commission to [...]

In a move that caught many by surprise, the Vatican announced Jan. 30 that it would conduct a study of U.S. communities of women religious to determine their quality of [...]

In a gesture billed as an 'act of peace,' on Jan. 24 Pope Benedict XVI lifted the 20-year excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one who is a Holocaust denier, [...]

In a resounding confirmation that the Catholic church's pro-life concern extends to the brave new world of biotechnology, the Vatican issued a tough document Dec. 12 condemning the freezing of [...]

On his recent swing Down Under, Pope Benedict XVI garnered headlines for drawing a half-million pumped-up young Catholics to World Youth Day as well as for his latest bout of [...]

Five years after the most tumultuous fall from grace in the history of American Catholicism, Cardinal Bernard Law seems to have achieved something in Rome few might have thought possible [...]

In the court of public opinion, Roman Catholicism usually looms as the great 'Doctor No' of bioethical debate. From abortion to birth control, from homosexuality to embryonic stem-cell research, the [...]

A butterfly in China beats its wings, in the classic illustration of how small events can trigger big ones, and rain falls around the world. In Asia today, however, forces [...]

Complex cases, jurists say, make bad law. Maybe that's why so much Catholic debate about end-of-life care, especially the morality of delivering food and water through a tube to keep [...]

History always cuts deeper than headlines, a point that clearly applies to recent Vatican moves to dust off the old Latin Mass and to declare Catholicism the one true church. [...]

Watching the current crisis in the Polish church, American Catholics may be forgiven a sense of deja vu. Over the past month, media leaks and rumors of clerical misconduct have [...]

During his first four foreign trips, Pope Benedict XVI developed the annoying habit of making the world wait for the big story. In Poland last May, for example, his speech [...]

Though the crisis set off by Pope Benedict XVI's controversial comments on Islam is obviously no laughing matter, it may be that the signature question of comedienne Joan Rivers best [...]

As the one-year anniversary of Benedict XVI's election neared, newspapers, news magazines and TV and radio outlets were scrambling, trying to outline what the last 12 months have taught us [...]

An alliance between Catholics and Protestant evangelicals, focused on issues of sexuality and the family, could be 'among the most important opportunities in all of American history' for the Catholic [...]

My wife and I moved to Rome almost exactly five years ago, arriving on July 2, 2000, which happened to be the first day of an international Gay Pride festival [...]

Given that the mission of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is safe-guarding Catholic orthodoxy, it's hardly a shock that Pope Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [...]

Two days before the opening of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago had a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation [...]

Prognostication is a notoriously hazardous business, and the trash heaps of church history are littered with the carcasses of journalists who have tried to predict the next pope. Almost no [...]

russia has haunted Pope John Paul II, from the confrontation with Communism during his first decade to his push for reconciliation with the Russian Orthodox in the last. This first [...]

Forty years ago this month the Second Vatican Council issued what was to become a landmark document for Roman Catholicism, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Primarily the [...]

Say 'Rome' to most Catholics, and they automatically think 'Vatican.' But outside the 109-acre confines of the Vatican city-state, there are many other slices of ecclesiastical life in the Eternal [...]

By welcoming 150 representatives of a dozen world religions to Assisi, the home of beloved peacemaker St. Francis, Pope John Paul II hoped to affirm in the bloody post-Sept. 11 [...]

Recent turmoil in Austria's Catholic church has made that nation a focal point for global reform efforts. This week a national assembly of Austrian Catholics, called the 'Dialogue for Austria,' [...]

Critics allege group was unqualified, biased in judgment Eighteen months ago, 11 men met in the Vatican to overhaul the American lectionary, the collection of scripture readings authorized for use [...]

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio -- They don't look much like the vanguard of a revolution. The more than 100 Catholics who gathered here July 22-24 -- solidly middle lass, mostly parents with [...]

HAYS, Kan. -- 'I coulda been a contender,' Marlon Brando says in that famous, anguished scene from On the Waterfront. 'I coulda been somebody.' For many people, the remembrance of [...]

As scientific lore has it, a team of physicists led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first artificial, self-sustaining nuclear reaction on a squash court underneath an old football stadium at [...]

This article focuses on the political developments in the United States. Candidate for the post of Mayor, Mark Green has displayed a steadfast commitment to political activism and consumer advocacy since the 1970's, when he was one of the most effective of consumer advocate Ralph Nader's Raiders. This background reflects a principled skepticism about corporate power that is rare among politicians and that animated his creative activism as New York's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs and more recently as Public Advocate. Electing him mayor would give New Yorkers an ombudsman at the top.

Two moments captured the mood swings at a five-day summit on the future of efforts to promote Christian unity, which brought together some of the best ecumenical minds in the [...]

While violence generated by the radical 'black bloc' dominated initial headlines during the G-8 summit in Genoa, it is now Italy's men in blue who find themselves at the center [...]

Like many Italian cities, Latina, forty miles south of Rome, has a small park nestled in the center of town near the main piazza. There's a swing set, a roller-skating [...]

Gay pride event raises consciousness, draws papal rebuke For New Yorker John-Michael Savoca, a 25-year veteran of the gay rights movement, there was something about the World Pride 2000 march [...]

World gathering raises religious, human rights issues While most of the world's news reports on World Pride 2000 have focused on predictable street theater -- drag queens, right-wing protests and [...]

On questions of church structure, conversation `brutally closed' A French cardinal seen by some Vatican-watchers as papabile -- a candidate for pope -- has challenged Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church's [...]