What do the plight of the Little Sisters of the Poor and the fate of persecuted Christians in the Middle East have in common? The USCCB "explains" in a video.
Seventeen states have imposed tough new voting restrictions for this election, a campaign of voter suppression that presents a true threat to our democratic system.
Some conservatives tend to confuse fidelity with a one-size-fits-all legalism. If there's one thing you can say about Pope Francis, it's that he's no legalist.
The Chicago anti-Trump protests exemplify an ugly strain of illiberalism, one that makes the right to expression contingent on the content of a speaker’s views.
The “rebellion” of mostly white, working-class voters that Donald Trump has cynically appealed to could destroy an enduring institution. It has only itself to blame.
Antonin Scalia’s impact on the Court was mixed. He will be remembered more for the flamboyance of his dissents than for the reach of his majority opinions.
What's really at stake in the Friedrichs case is whether the right of workers to organize will be sacrificed to the Court’s contentious views regarding free speech.
A fixation on slashing government spending on services without regard to the effect on the basic well-being of citizens helped bring the Flint crisis about.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have conducted a remarkably substantive debate on a range of issues, including how to help U.S. workers and regulate Wall Street.
If we know for a fact more gun restrictions mean fewer gun-related deaths, why are the politics so complicated—even after Sandy Hook, Aurora, and San Bernardino?
Catholic teaching emphasizes the obligation of nations to help the stranger in need. It is neither statesman-like nor Christian to close the door on Syrian refugees.
How to remove ISIS is a puzzle whose solution will require resolve, patience, and international cooperation. For the United States to act alone would be a mistake.
Engagement rather than denunciation marked the synod’s formal pronouncements, a pastoral style deeply rooted in Vatican II, and embodied in everything Francis does.
Francis knows there's no such thing as a perfect family. Yet he also knows it's within families where we learn what it means to be responsible for one another.
Readers write to petition for women writers, praise Luke Timothy Johnson's essay on Thomas Merton, take issue with Andrew Bacevich, and clarify education goals.
The departure of Scott Walker from the presidential campaign should come as a relief to American working people. But the hostility toward labor he embodied remains.
Opening our doors to Syrian refugees is the right thing to do and an acknowledgement of the responsibility the United States bears for the chaos in the Middle East.
Donald Trump preaches an unadulterated version of a materialistic gospel. Money, he says, is the measure of all things. This is not just vulgar, but dangerous.
For Francis, climate change is part of a larger ecological crisis—that itself is part of a larger ethical failure involving how we treat the poor and the unborn.
While other countries outspend the United States in infrastructure, political ideology and lack of investment leave our railroads, highways, and airports crumbling.
The European Union's intent to address migration from Africa comes as a welcome if belated development in a crisis that has been crying for moral leadership.
Kansas City Catholics have been wondering whether Robert Finn would be replaced with a bishop who would put the safety of children first. They now have their answer.
The Obama administration has not made grandiose claims about what a deal with Iran on its nuclear program can achieve. But there is reason for guarded optimism.
Finding himself in a close race, Israel's prime minister resorted to scare-mongering and demagoguery on what one is tempted to call an almost biblical scale.
As mainstream news organizations were losing their claim on authority and trust, Jon Stewart used smarts and comedy to establish his own journalistic credibility.
Germans seem to have forgotten that Germany was the beneficiary of debt forgiveness several times in the twentieth century, after mistakes far worse than Greece's.
The Paris terrorists attacked a principle central to all liberal democracies: the freedom to speak one’s mind freely, without fear of being locked up gunned down.
A governor of modest achievements, Mario Cuomo nonetheless left a mark on the nation's broader political debates and offered a forceful rebuttal to Reaganism.
Americans receive confirmation of what they'd suspected: That CIA and Bush administration officials have been less than truthful in their accounts on torture.
Unfortunately, the humanitarian conditions that urge action on immigration reform appear less important to legislators than the politics surrounding the issue.
The current situation in Iraq may pull the United States back into that country, and thus threatens to undermine Obama’s efforts to reorient American foreign policy.
The National Climate Assessment report makes clear that the emission of carbon is causing climate change; this is not a hypothesis, but a scientific fact
Republicans in nine states have pushed through laws with strict photo ID requirements as well as a variety of limitations on early voting and absentee voting. Why?
The GOP’s obduracy on income inequality has kept the federal government from adopting any policy that might increase the take-home pay of low-income workers.
Events that trigger major international conflicts often appear small in retrospect. What's happening in Ukraine provides another example of this paradox.
The UN made several recommendations the Holy See would do well to heed. But it weakened its case by weighing in on doctrinal matters unrelated to abuse.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a serious problem, but demanding complete Iranian capitulation, either at the negotiating table or on the battlefield, is no solution.
