By Fred Kammer, S.J.

There are often times when good people find themselves in serious disagreement with the prescriptions of “the law”—abortion, wars, the treatment of immigrants, the death penalty, etc. In the United States, we have a strong tradition of “the rule of law” to which many appeal as if such an appeal should end debate and assure obedience to legal prohibitions or statutory mandates. Just what is the Catholic position on such conflicts between statute and conscience?

By Edward B. Arroyo, S.J. and Sue Weishar, Ph.D.

In November, 2011, the PEW Economic Mobility Project, together with the Russell Sage Foundation and the Sutton Truse, released a study of ten countries and how socioeconomic advantage, as measured by parents' education, is transmitted over the course of one's life.  The select key findings are:

In a November 22, 2011 releaso, Citizens for Tax Justice outlined how the deficit reduction "Super Committee" was undone by the excessive devotion to tax cuts and the inability to wean themselves from the Bush tax cuts that have contributed substantially to the current federal deficit and accumulated debt.  See "Super Committee" Undone by Devotion to Tax Cuts here.

Fr. Ted Arroyo, S.J., the Alabama Associate and founding executive director for JSRI, describes the work of JSRI, how Alabama’s HB 56 impacts the lives of undocumented immigrants in Alabama, and his work opposing the law in a National Jesuit News podcast posted November 15, 2011.

by Fred Kammer, SJ

In the month since the release of the Vatican document or “Note” on global financial systems,¹ responses have ranged from praise as “extraordinary”² [Professor Steve Schneck, Board Member of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good] to effective dismissal as coming “from the lower echelons of the Roman Curia”³  [George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center]. 

By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

We live in a moment of economic, social, moral, and spiritual impasse. Wondrous technological achievements fail to assuage our possessive individualism, fail to end extreme poverty, fail to cultivate life-giving connections between the rich and poor peoples of the earth, and fail to nurture our universal rootedness in the earth’s ecosystems.

By Fred Kammer, S.J.

The nation was held prisoner this past summer as our politicians played “chicken” with one another about raising the debt ceiling, slashing spending, increasing revenue, or somehow reneging on our fiscal obligations to ourselves and to external creditors. A last-minute deal was reached at the end of July, but it still cost us our Triple-A credit rating. Now there is a new congressional “supercommittee” at work on the debt.

By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops, in their 2005 pastoral letter A Culture of Life and the Death Penalty, reaffirm the teaching of Pope John Paul II, of the Roman Catholic magisterium, and of U.S. Catholic Bishops since 1979, that “the death penalty is unnecessary and unjustified in our time and circumstances.”

Four fundamental points inform their judgment:

St. Thomas University, Houston

June 10, 2011

Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ