“Environmental stewardship” is a concept that has grown more important in Catholic political discussions over the past few decades. Our rights and responsibilities with respect to the natural world have been addressed in many recent social encyclicals, including Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. While the pope is quite clear that we are to respect … Read more
On January 29, the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Death Penalty (CMN) was launched. According to its executive director, Karen Clifton, the CMN was created “with the encouragement of the USCCB.” The support of the bishops’ conference is substantial. The Coordinating Committee includes both Kathy Saile, the director of the Office of Domestic Concerns, … Read more
Ten Resolutions of a New Feminist ManHenry Karlson  The answer to the question of women’s rights, as with all other serious questions, is in an understandable, sensible and revived Christianity. — Vladimir Soloviev  In his 1995 “Letter to Women,” Pope John Paul II, continuing in the tradition of his encyclical Mulieres Dignitatem, stated … Read more
Bryan Cones, the managing editor at U.S. Catholic, is upset that I used the word “fake” to describe Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. Two weeks ago, I criticized those organizations for supporting the Senate health-care bill containing abortion funding. At the Huffington Post, Cones calls me out: Hudson appoints himself … Read more
The topic of physician-assisted suicide, or PAS, is a confusing and heart-wrenching issue for many. In some ways, it can touch us more personally than abortion, as we are all likely to face difficult end-of-life choices at some point, whether for ourselves or for a loved one. We have to navigate Church teaching on bioethics; … Read more
Lisa Correnti is a San Diego mother of seven children. But like many other Catholic mothers, she has engaged in politics in order to defend the basic values of her faith. For several years she has quietly built her Web site, www.onenationundergod.org, into a goldmine of up-to-date information on the performance of Catholic politicians. In … Read more
Last May in Tucson, Arizona, two young men named Armando Estrada and Rosendo C. Valenzuela were working for Mamie Gong, an elderly Chinese woman. Mamie, who owned a trailer park and some land outside the city, had hired the men to help her clean up some trash that had accumulated on the vacant parcel. Â … Read more
With the announcement last November that Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, was ditching cloning in favor of the “amazingly efficient” method of induced pluripotent stem-cell research (iPS) — which reprograms adult stem cells into embryonic ones without using human embryos or eggs — pro-lifers had reason to celebrate. The most prominent cloning … Read more
Pinning “feminism” to the board — as Dawn Eden attempts to do in her article “Eve of Deconstruction“ — is a collector’s task, not the capture of a single specimen. Eden misses the beauty, dignity, and continuing value of the feminist movement, distracted no doubt by the vehemently secular individualism of certain noisy modern feminists. … Read more
Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women, Mulieris Dignitatem, turns 20 this year, and in honor of its August 15 anniversary, Catholic women’s conferences around the world are celebrating the single instance in all John Paul II’s writings when he advocated “feminism” — or, as he qualified it, a … Read more
The Chicago Tribune ran an opinion piece by Robert McClory on Sunday that addressed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s clarification regarding the care of people in a vegetative state. In that statement, the CDF confirmed what most Catholics already understood: [T]he provision of water and food, even by artificial means, is in … Read more