By Andrew Walther COMMENTARY (CNA) — When I visited Erbil, Iraq, in December with a congressional delegation determined to find out why Christians had often been excluded from U.S. aid programs, Archbishop Nicodemus Daoud of Mosul told us that Americans generally care more about endangered frogs than about endangered Christian communities. He has a point….
Editor’s note: Rueters columnist, Edward Hadas, provides a good discussion of principles of Catholic social teaching, in the context of the Pope’s new encyclical, Laudato Si. As one reads, also consider the debt we have to future children in defending their right to be born into a family with their mothers and fathers united in…
By Hillary Mast FORT WAYNE, IN (CNA) — Ever since entering the Church 27 years ago, theologian Lance Richey had always known about the Catholic social activist Dorothy Day in passing. “It’s hard not to run across her name, but I honestly had not paid much attention to her,” Richey told CNA in a recent phone…
NEW ORLEANS (CNA/EWTN News) — Church support for marriage among poor and middle class Americans can play a key role in combating income inequality and providing a good environment for children, a sociologist told the U.S. bishops. “If you care about bridging the marriage divide, you should care about economic justice, cultural change, and the renewal…
By Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch NEW YORK (WSJ) — Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can’t change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn’t some suspect that…
VATICAN (CNA/EWTN News) — Pope Francis’ appointment of new cardinals from distant and impoverished countries has helped bring the topic of pastoral care for those struggling in poverty to Vatican discussions. “I suppose looking back now, it’s not surprising that he chose cardinals from the poorest countries in the world. Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, and Haiti…
BALTIMORE, MD (CNA) — Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston has said that the Catholic Church’s work in addressing poverty in the United States needs to be made “front and center” in people’s minds. “The U.S. bishops’ conference is very engaged in all of these issues, in Catholic Relief Services, immigration, Catholic Charities, but unfortunately those…
By Jason DeParle ANN ARBOR, MI (New York Times) — Jessica Schairer has so much in common with her boss, Chris Faulkner, that a visitor to the day care center they run might get them confused. They are both friendly white women from modest Midwestern backgrounds who left for college with conventional hopes of marriage,…
WASHINGTON — The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has urged the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) not to adopt a proposed regulation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories for which discrimination in HUD programs is prohibited. In comments filed today with HUD, Anthony…
By Father John Flynn, LC ROME (zenit.org) — The U.S. Census Bureau released the latest figures on income and poverty on Sept. 16. According to the report the official U.S. poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3%, up from 13.2% in 2008. In raw numbers this adds up to 43.6 million people in poverty in 2009, compared…