ROME – The disappearance of Christian communities from the Middle East threatens hope for finding a way to preserve traditional Arab values while also recognizing individual human rights, said two of the region’s Catholic bishops.Read More
MADRID – Seven men – former political prisoners released by the Cuban government, some accompanied by family members – arrived in Madrid July 13, the first of 52 prisoners released in a deal partially brokered by the Cuban Catholic Church.Read More
Some 32 high school students have returned to their communities with plans for a social justice project, thanks to training they received at Micah 6:8.Read More
Larry Parr has one fear. “The violence,” he said. “Where I am, there’s a lot violence. Just seeing that, and how people are affected, is something that’s very tough.”Read More
A three-pronged approach to treating lung cancer is boosting survival rates, even if the patient is diagnosed after the cancer has spread to the nearby lymph nodes. Tri-modality therapy for lung cancer is about 12 years old, and doctors now have enough data to see its benefits.Read More
WASHINGTON – When residents of Fremont, Neb., voted June 21 to bar undocumented immigrants from renting housing or getting jobs in their city, they stepped onto a path that other U.S. towns have already blazed, with legal and political results that remain unclear years later.Read More
The journey of the season of Lent always includes my own journeying around the archdiocese. On Ash Wednesday I had Masses for the students at Maryvale, and later a Mass at Annunciation Parish. The first weekend of Lent I had the privilege of leading a parish mission at St. Joseph in Sykesville.Read More
During the long Lent of 2002, I started using the phrase “Catholic Lite” to denote a cast of mind that, in my judgment, had contributed mightily to the crisis of fidelity that was at the root of clerical sexual abuse and episcopal misgovernance. Within that mindset, one of the fundamental questions shaping ecclesial life had...Read More
For many years, James Ulmer has given something up for Lent. Whether it was candy, soda, alcohol or chocolate, the 56-year-old parishioner of St. Katharine Drexel in Frederick always made it through the traditional 40-day penitential season without reneging on his sacrificial pledges – although he admitted that going without chocolate “almost killed” him.Read More
In the same week Matthew D’Adamo was laid off after nearly a decade as a graphic designer with The Baltimore Sun, he and his girlfriend of three years broke up. It was a devastating one-two punch that left the lifelong artist reeling more than a year ago.Read More
I don’t know what George Orwell, author of “Animal Farm” and “1984,” thought about abortion, cloning and stem-cell research and, not knowing, I’m not enlisting the British novelist and essayist, who died in 1950, in the pro-life cause. But I do know what he thought about the abuse of the English language. Based on that,...Read More
As a critical election in Southern Sudan draws near, Sudanese Catholic leaders are appealing to the United States and Western nations to speak out more strongly against violence that could plunge the African nation back into a full-scale civil war.Read More