Pope Benedict has appointed a lay woman, Flaminia Giovanelli, as a superior in one of its dicasteries, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Each dicastery is headed by a prefect (usually a cardinal or archbishop), assisted by a secretary…

A burning issue in France right now is whether women should be allowed to wear the burqa — a complete face-veil considered obligatory by some Muslims for the sake of modesty. Non-Muslims may be confused about a variety of terms…

After two weeks of plunging into the waters of the Koran, I can finally come up for air — fresh air. After taking time to plow through the repetitive and garbled “revelations” given to Muhammad in the name of Allah,…

If we step into the Way Back Machine to the year 1988, we might recall the enormous uproar concerning an author named Salmon Rushdie. He became a household word because of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses , in which the…

When a teenager runs away from home, jumps on a cross-country bus and ends up in a juvenile detention center in a distant state, one might surmise that there were a combination of drugs, rebellion and a forbidden love interest…

On a recent pilgrimage, my daughter and I took a detour to see if we could find the hospital in which I was born. The map was confusing, the traffic was pressing and we waived off for lunch. There, over…

In my earliest years, I lived with my grandparents on a postage stamp-sized lot in a large steel city. Our working class neighborhood housed first- and second-generation immigrants, mostly from Europe, who presided over orderly homes, clean-swept streets and trimmed…

Despite vehement protests against religious bodies that “interfere” with intimate personal choices, public figures love to use snippets of scripture or doctrine that seem to lend credence to their outlandish behavior. Usually, such attempts at justification prove their shallow understanding…

Many are familiar with an item from one of the closing documents of the Second Vatican Council which gave a shout out to the feminine genius. Having praised women for their tremendous gifts and skills, it prophetically noted that they…

While hysteria swirls around Sarah Palin, wife and mother of five, everyone would benefit by taking a large step back from the pandemonium in order to better perceive what is really happening. Her supporters rightly point to her affirmation of…