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ANNAPOLIS – Sen. Alex X. Mooney knows he’s the man of the hour in the death penalty debate. In the deadlocked Maryland Senate judiciary committee, the parishioner of St. John the Evangelist in Frederick holds the deciding vote on whether legislation to abolish the death penalty will make it to the Senate floor. While the committee is expected to vote at the end of this week, Sen. Mooney still doesn’t know what his position will be. “I really don’t know where I’m going to come down,” said the Frederick County Republican, speaking to The Catholic Review during the March 12 Maryland March for Life. “I don’t consider it the same issue as abortion,” said Sen. Mooney, an abortion opponent. “On the death penalty, there’s no black and white.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Pope Benedict XVI’s top diplomat at the United Nations said the Vatican wants to normalize relations with China, which it sees as a major way of advancing religious freedom and fostering unity among Chinese Catholics. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s U.N. nuncio, expressed hope that a papal letter to Chinese Catholics to be released around Easter will be seen as proof of the Vatican’s good will and pave the way for Vatican talks with Chinese officials that could lead to diplomatic relations and resolution of differences over the church’s status in the Asian nation.

WASHINGTON – “School choice is becoming less and less a partisan issue,” Morgan Brown, an assistant deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, told a group of Catholic education leaders gathered in Washington for congressional advocacy days. The Bush administration “is the most pro-school-choice administration we’ve ever had at the federal level,” said Mr. Brown, who heads the Education Department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement.

The recent article, “Christian leaders call for change in Iraq war policies,” (CR, March 1) urging Maryland Christians to “travel to Washington March 16 and surround the White House” to protest Bush’s “immoral Iraq war policies” is amazingly ill-informed and politically charged.

PHILADELPHIA – Who’s that you’re seeing on YouTube? Yes, it is really Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia. The cardinal is providing video reflections for each Sunday of Lent, as well as for Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter on the free, video-sharing Web site, which allows users to upload, view and share video clips. Once on the site, www.youtube.com, visitors can easily find the reflections by typing “Cardinal Rigali” into the search area.

WASHINGTON – The damage caused by embryonic stem-cell research goes far beyond the embryos destroyed by treating “a great many women as egg factories, at great risk to their health and safety,” according to the U.S. bishops’ pro-life spokeswoman. Deirdre A. McQuade, director of planning and information for the bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, was commenting on a congressional briefing at which scientists, ethicists and a grieving mother presented evidence about the dangers to women posed by egg harvesting.

ANNAPOLIS – When Dr. Mary Ellen Hrutka attended a Catholic elementary school in Yonkers, N.Y., there were 86 students in her class and the faculty was made up almost entirely of Franciscan Sisters of Baltimore. Some five decades later, Catholic education has changed dramatically. Religious sisters, priests and brothers now make up a small minority of faculty in Catholic schools across the country. Class sizes have shrunk and costs have increased significantly as school leaders struggle to pay for lay teacher salaries, modern technology and enhanced curriculum – all while maintaining their buildings and trying to keep tuition from spiraling out of reach. To meet the challenges of a changing educational environment, Dr. Hrutka has been named executive director of the newly formed Mid-Atlantic Catholic Schools Consortium.