Videocast
Buddhism became a sanctuary for Dr. Barry Kerzin and led to his ordination as a monk. Now he serves as the Dalai Lama’s personal physician and combines his medical wisdom with love and compassion that translate into empathy. More
“What are the ethics and morals of Jews giving kidneys to anybody, as long as that recipient is Jewish?” asks writer Paul Berger, who works for the national Jewish newspaper Forward. More
“The pope looks at the world in a different way. He looks at the world, he looks at economics, he looks at the environment, politics from the bottom up, from the outside in, and those aren’t Washington’s priorities or Washington’s ways. So we’ve had an alternative vision and a great example, and my hope is we listened, we learned, and we maybe even might follow his example,” says John Carr, director of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. More
“Jerusalem is a place historically if there is something different about us, let’s fight about it. That’s basically the vibe. And so we and the chorus are trying to create an alternate reality,” says conductor Micah Hendler. He founded the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an ensemble of Israeli and Palestinian high school singers. More
American Catholics, says Rev. Thomas Reese of National Catholic Reporter, live out their faith in the local parish, and “they want to meet somebody like Pope Francis. And if the clergy and the bishops and the people aren’t like Pope Francis, or namely like Jesus, more welcoming, compassionate, loving, they’re going to turn around and never come back.” More
The Roman Catholic Church’s understanding of the permanent nature of marriage “is really meant to be a countercultural position,” says Professor Susan Ross of Loyola University Chicago’s theology department. “The Church’s challenge is to find a way to hold marriage as this sacred bond, while recognizing the very human situation in which it falls apart.” More
“The American post-Enlightenment contractual idea of marriage—that is, marriage is what we decide it is—is an incredibly powerful idea that haunts the minds of American Catholics…The under-65 crowd is much more into contractual understandings of marriage than covenantal understandings of … More
Pope Francis arrives in the US on Tuesday, September 22nd, for five busy days in Washington, New York, and Philadelphia. Managing editor Kim Lawton asks American Catholics about the beliefs that shape the Pope’s view of the world, and Stephen Schneck and Tom Roberts joins host Bob Abernethy in the studio for a conversation about their expectations for the pope’s trip. More
“We are trying to convey to the folks that the right to vote is a civic sacrament, and the voting booth is in fact the altar of our democracy. And for us to allow voter disenfranchisement and suppression to go on is a desecration of both,” says NAACP president Cornell Brooks, who led the America’s Journey for Justice march to Washington, D.C. More
“There are extraordinary circumstances under which people may be able to break the law and claim higher authority, but being an elected official is not one of them,” says Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. But Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society disagrees. “The law actually requires religious accommodation where it’s reasonable. It’s part of our traditions, it’s part of our history, and it’s part of our law,” he says. More











