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ST. LOUIS – When Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis ordained nine men to the priesthood for the archdiocese May 24, it was the largest ordination class for the archdiocese since 1987.

If the United States had a nobility, Avery Dulles would have been born into it. His great-grandfather, John W. Foster, and his great-uncle, Robert Lansing, both served as Secretary of State. So did his father, John Foster Dulles, who also negotiated the post-World War II peace treaty with Japan. Avery Dulles’s uncle, Allen Dulles, was a legendary World War II spymaster and the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Aunt Eleanor, whom many thought more formidable than her brothers, Foster and Allen, negotiated the Austrian State Treaty that pried the Red Army out of Vienna in 1955. How did all this staunch Presbyterian stock produce a Catholic convert, a Jesuit priest, and the first American theologian to be raised to the cardinalate?

WASHINGTON – Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., has reiterated his request that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius not receive Communion until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion, but said he will not ask eucharistic ministers to refuse to give her Communion.

VATICAN CITY – A religious vow of obedience is a witness to the truth that obeying God’s will sometimes involves reining in unbridled personal freedom, said a new Vatican document.

Dennis Meehan, a 22-year principal of Bishop Ludden High School in Syracuse, N.Y., has been appointed by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien as principal of The Seton Keough High School, Baltimore, effective in July. Mr. Meehan, who was chosen by a five-member search committee of experienced educators in the Baltimore area, succeeds Dr. B. Curtis Turner, who will serve as the new principal of St. Frances Academy, Baltimore, after a seven-year tenure at Seton Keough.