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Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, will replace Tim Russert, his recently deceased colleague, as presenter of the Philip J. Murnion Lecture for the Catholic Common Ground Initiative June 27 at 8 p.m. at the Pryzbyla Center of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Several parishes in the archdiocese have joined an interfaith prayer service project that will be held on the 22nd of each month at Maryland churches, synagogues, and mosques in Maryland.

The Judith Sudilovsky interview of Jon Voight (CR, June 5) was surprising. Mr. Voight has demonstrated his commitment to helping people yet seems unaware of what has been happening to the Palestinians. That he visited Sderot and met with Israeli “terrorism victims and their families” mirrors the kind of guided tours given to our congressional representatives. Describing the death of a Palestinian mother killed by Israelis, there have actually been hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed, as the fault of the Palestinians is a worn and tawdry narrative used by Israeli hawks. He goes on to describe the Israelis, with the most powerful army in the Middle East, as besieged on all sides, and in candor, you must ask the question, did he think Ms. Sudilovsky was from the Catholic News Service or the Jerusalem Post? Does he understand that, yes, there is violence on both sides and the killing of innocents, but does he understand that the Israelis are far better at it than the Palestinians? Does Mr. Voight, who has had a bird’s-eye view of the world have any idea what it is like in Gaza? Is he even a little bit curious of why former President Carter, a Nobel Prize winner for peace, refers to the Palestinian condition as apartheid? Surely he must. Given his views expressed in the interview, one hopes he hasn’t.

I found the cartoon by H.L. Schwadron in (CR, June 12) incongruous. If I understand the cartoon, it mocks a candidate willing to “meet tyrants” “to convince them to choose good over evil” going after the “youthful idealism vote”.

LOS ANGELES – As same-sex couples prepared to marry in California, the seven bishops of the Los Angeles Archdiocese reiterated that they “cannot approve of redefining marriage” as anything but the union of “a man and a woman in a committed relationship.”