Catholic groups, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan's archdiocese of New York, filed lawsuits in federal courts on May 21 to stop the Obama administration from implementing a mandate that would require them to cover contraceptives in their health plans.

The Supreme Court is weighing the legal challenge to Arizona's strict immigration law, and religious groups opposed to the law are appealing to language throughout the scriptures "to take care of the stranger," says Catholic News Service staff writer Patricia Zapor.

Is the federal government more than “one word for things we do together”? Should government say "you're on your own"? A politician and a priest speak about Catholic social teaching, the budget, and government's role in our lives.

“I think you could compare it to a hostile takeover,” says reporter, author, and Vatican observer David Gibson. Might the Leadership Conference of Women Religious simply disband and reorganize on its own?

The Boston Archdiocesan Choir School has been described not as a school with a choir, but as a choir with a school.

"As a parish nurse one of the greatest things we do is be present and just listen," says Diane Tieman of Queen of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church in suburban Chicago.

Catholic Cubans have strong lay networks, says Catholic News Service staff writer Patricia Zapor, but they still need and want "a little bit more of everything—more freedom, more services, more priests."

"We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate," says the abbess of St. Mary's, Ireland's only Cistercian monastery for women.

“She had to have been the least naïve nun that I can think of,” says Kathryn Wat, curator of an exhibition of prints by graphic artist Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986) at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

"Rick Santorum is a very particular kind of Catholic...A lot of Catholics don’t see themselves in him, and a lot of people actually don’t even know that he’s Catholic. Most people assume he’s an evangelical," says Religion News Service editor in chief Kevin Eckstrom.