A study of the effects of public policy on abortion rates during the past two decades shows that providing social and economic supports for women and family contributes to a significant reduction in abortions, according to Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. The group, founded in 2005 and dedicated to "promoting awareness of the Catholic social tradition" said the findings should provide common ground for both Republicans and Democrats interested in reducing the rate of abortion in the United States. The study was released Aug. 27 in Denver during a town hall meeting sponsored by Democrats for Life of America.

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Religious leaders and people of faith who've been invited to the table at this week's Democratic National Convention are not sitting quietly with their hands in their laps. The head of a large African-American denomination challenged the party on abortion. An Orthodox Jewish rabbi raised his voice about school choice. A thirty-something evangelical Christian author warned against Democrats who mock believers. Although well aware that party officials have political reasons for reaching out to them, several faith figures taking part in convention events say they want to go beyond talk about how faith and values inform longstanding Democratic policies. They are also calling for change on core Democratic issues, which could create tension.

Sixteen years after his father was denied a speaking part at a Democratic convention because his anti-abortion views led him to oppose Bill Clinton's candidacy, Senator Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania told the convention Tuesday night that Senator Barack Obama could bring together supporters and opponents of abortion rights. Mr. Casey is, like his father, former Gov. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania, a Roman Catholic who opposes abortion. He was invited to speak as part of a broad effort by the Obama campaign to reach out to religious voters and anti-abortion Democrats and independents.

Religious themes have been more likely to take center stage at recent Republican National Conventions than at Democratic gatherings. But politics and religion will be mingling all this week when Democrats convene in Denver to choose Barack Obama as their presidential nominee. Spurred by a presidential candidate who freely talks about his religious beliefs, Democrats will go to great lengths to display their own religious fervor. Obama's selection of Joe Biden as his running mate probably enhances the theme. Biden made a point of talking about his Irish-Catholic roots in Saturday's joint appearance with Obama.

The bottom line regarding abortion and mental health is that women have been hurt and they need help, says the founder of Project Rachel. "I have met women from every continent," Victoria Thorn told ZENIT. "I have heard many experiences and reasons for abortions -- and the sadness in a woman's heart is universal." Thorn's statement is in response to the American Psychological Association's study released this month that found there is "no credible evidence that a single elective abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in and of itself causes mental health problems for adult women."

American’s new poverty rate is "unacceptable," Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, said August 27. "It is unacceptable that in a nation that is as prosperous as ours that 37.3 million people, including 13.3 million children, continue to live in poverty. At 12.5 percent, the poverty rate indicates that reducing poverty is not a priority for this nation," he said in a press released issued by the nonprofit organization. For Catholic Charities USA, and our 1,700 local member agencies who serve nearly 8 million in need a year, the poverty rate is not just another economic statistic. This unacceptable figure represents the millions of families we see each and every day who are struggling just to make ends meet.

Democrats like to say that theirs is a "big-tent" party, welcome to members of all stripes. The same description, it seems, applies to their protesters. As delegates began flooding into Denver yesterday for the start of today's Democratic National Convention, hundreds of antiwar demonstrators marched from the state capitol to the Pepsi Center, the convention headquarters. But just about all they shared was a march route and an opposition to the war in Iraq. The demonstrators were an extraordinarily varied lot, promoting a mishmash of conflicting agendas and opinions. Many were sympathetic to Obama and the Democratic platform; others advocated an overthrow of the two-party system. They ranged from soft-spoken, 1960s-vintage antiwar activists to younger radicals, bandanas covering their faces, voicing objection to the very existence of the United States.

Nearly 600 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were detained, creating panic among dozens of families in this small southern Mississippi town. The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday. One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago. Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said that "religious witness has always had a vigorous and positive role in American public life, including the nation's political life." It's what the Founding Fathers "intended, and that's the way it should be," he said in an interview with the Denver Catholic Register, the archdiocesan newspaper, about his new book titled "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life." In the book, he talks "about the right role of Catholic faith in American public life." Published by Doubleday, it hit bookstores Aug. 12. "Democracies need people of moral conviction. (Pope) John Paul II said that, and so did George Washington," the archbishop said. "Free societies thrive on public moral debate, and they need a moral consensus to survive.

The Bush administration yesterday announced plans to implement a controversial regulation designed to protect doctors, nurses and other health-care workers who object to abortion from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs. The rule empowers federal health officials to pull funding from more than 584,000 hospitals, clinics, health plans, doctors' offices and other entities if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral or religious grounds. "People should not be forced to say or do things they believe are morally wrong," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said. "Health-care workers should not be forced to provide services that violate their own conscience."

Social conservatives are growing more wary of church involvement in politics, joining moderates and liberals in their unease about blurring the lines between pulpit and ballot box, a new study found. Fifty percent of conservatives think churches and other places of worship should stay out of social and political matters, up from 30 percent four years ago, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. That significant shift in conservative thought has brought the country to a tipping point on the question: a slim majority of Americans- 52 percent- now think churches should keep out of politics. That's an eight percentage point increase over 2004 and the first time a majority of Americans has held that opinion since Pew officials started asking the question 12 years ago.

The Vatican newspaper said the U.S. plan to install a missile shield in Eastern Europe could seriously threaten U.S.-Russian relations and the future of global disarmament. Russia has strongly objected to the plan, saying placement of the missile shield would endanger its own security. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, ran a front-page story about the dispute under the headline: "Multilateralism and disarmament at risk." The article appeared Aug. 21, the day after the United States and Poland signed an agreement to place 10 interceptor missiles in Polish territory.
"The signing of the missile shield agreement ... has produced a dynamic that seems able to threaten multilateralism and the process of international disarmament," the newspaper said.

His face fills the screen as the man looks earnestly into the camera and speaks directly to the viewer. "As a pastor, I know you can learn a lot about a man’s character by the way he treats his family," he says. It’s prominent evangelical leader Brian McLaren, and so begins the new TV ad for Sen. Barack Obama, which ran last weekend during Pastor Rick Warren’s presidential forum at Saddleback Church in California. The ad on "standing up for families" doesn’t come from the Obama campaign, but from an independent political action committee (PAC) that has recently joined the battle for the Christian vote. The Matthew 25 Network, as it's called, is a group of Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal Christians. Its purpose, organizers say, is to broaden the issues Christians pay attention to and also to counter falsehoods or smears targeting Senator Obama. The PAC is sponsoring radio and television advertisements aimed specifically at Christians, mostly on Christian radio in key swing states. There are ads in religious publications as well.

Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors. Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin asked for a blanket moratorium on immigration raids in Rhode Island until the nation adopts comprehensive immigration reform. Tobin made the requests in a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston. Tobin's action comes during a heated debate over illegal immigration in heavily Catholic Rhode Island. Authorities recently raided six courthouses looking for illegal immigrant maintenance workers and Gov. Don Carcieri, himself a Catholic, signed an order requiring state police and prison officials to identify illegal immigrants for possible deportation. "We believe that raids on the immigrant community are unjust, unnecessary, and counterproductive," the bishop's letter says. It urges individual federal agents to consider the morality of their actions and refuse to participate if their conscience dictates.

So what really happened in New Orleans in the twilight-zone days immediately following Hurricane Katrina? That's one of the questions to which Mark Cave, an oral historian with the Historic New Orleans Collection, has been seeking answers in his personal interviews over the last three years with 500 police officers, firefighters, National Guard troops and emergency medical personnel who were on the ground after the storm. Since any trial lawyer knows that two people viewing the same event can come up with wildly differing accounts of what they saw and experienced, Cave said the value of conducting hundreds of interviews with people on the scene is that the "truth" rests in the preponderance of evidence. In an interview with the Clarion Herald, newspaper of the New Orleans Archdiocese, Cave said conducting hundreds of interviews allows common stories and facts to emerge from the jumble of eyewitness accounts, and the commonly shared memories can be relied on as the best version of the truth.

The American military has depended on private contractors since sutlers sold paper, bacon, sugar, and other small luxuries to Continental Army troops during the Revolutionary War. But the scale of the use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in US history, according to a new congressional report that may be the most thorough official account yet of the practice. As of early 2008, at least 190,000 private personnel were working on US-funded projects in the Iraq theater, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) survey found. That means that for each uniformed member of the US military in the region, there was also a contract employee – a ratio of 1 to 1.

The Beijing bishop appointed by China's state-controlled Catholic Church said in an interview Wednesday that he hopes Pope Benedict XVI will visit his country and that relations with the Vatican are improving. "We strongly hope that Benedict XVI will make a trip to China," Joseph Li Shan told Italy's RAI state TV. "Relations with the Vatican are constantly improving. We can say that there are big developments." Li is well-regarded by the Vatican and his installation last year was seen as a positive sign in the long-standing dispute between China and the Holy See over who should appoint bishops.

Will Californians drive less to reduce global warming? Maybe not on our own -- but state officials are ready to nudge us. The Legislature is on the verge of adopting the nation's first law to control planet-warming gases by curbing sprawl. The bill, sponsored by incoming state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), is expected to pass the Assembly today and the Senate on Friday.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill, but sponsors expect him to sign it once the state passes a budget. The legislation, SB 375, would offer incentives to steer public funds away from sprawled development. The state spends about $20 billion a year on transportation, and under the new law, projects that meet climate goals would get priority.

A group of relatives of murder victims called on state lawmakers yesterday to repeal the death penalty, complaining that the long appeals process that accompanies capital murder prosecutions drags families through painful delays without delivering the justice that the system initially promises. Standing with their arms around each other's shoulders and holding photos of their loved ones, 10 people delivered a letter signed by dozens more like them to the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, which held the third of its four scheduled hearings yesterday in Annapolis. The panel is examining disparities in the application of the death penalty, the cost differential between litigating prolonged capital punishment cases and life imprisonment, and the impact of DNA evidence.

Thousands of Iraqi refugees have arrived in the United States as part of a nationwide resettlement program to bring 12,000 Iraqis to the United States by the end of next month, officials said. About a quarter of the 9,000 Iraqi refugees already here arrived over the past month, according to a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. Most come from secondary countries including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. A resettlement program run by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden has received five Iraqi families in recent months — a total of 19 people — and more are expected, according to executive director Kevin Hickey.

The U.S. bishops' annual Labor Day message calls the faithful to use Catholic social teaching to guide them as they cast their votes this November. "An American Catholic Tradition" marks Labor Day, celebrated Monday, Sept. 1, and calls for "renewed vigor as we seek to build together a society that cares for its own, reaches out to the poor and vulnerable, and offers true hope to all." Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York, chairman of the U.S. episcopal conference's Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, issued the statement. It highlights the needs of workers, economic inequalities and the responsibilities of all citizens to help improve working conditions.
Given the coming national elections, the Labor Day statement reminds Catholics to use Church social and moral teaching to assess issues of economic justice, human life and dignity.

The narrative of the presidential campaign appeared to be set on the issue of abortion: Sen. Barack Obama was the abortion-rights candidate who was reaching out to foes, seeking common ground and making inroads. Sen. John McCain was the abortion opponent whose reticence about faith and whose battles on campaign finance laws drew suspect glances from would-be supporters. But both those impressions have been altered since the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum in California on Saturday.

As a summer afternoon rainstorm brewed, nearly two dozen Cubans gathered on a friend's covered porch to celebrate Mass. Wooden chairs were lined up, row by row, to accommodate neighbors. A visiting priest turned a small table into an altar. Another man strummed the opening song on his guitar while a couple of horses rested on the nearby grass, languishing in the muggy heat. Liturgies at home have become a phenomenon in Cuba as the church slowly rebuilds communities of faith. They are a way of bringing Jesus into the barrio instead of expecting that people make their way to a church they might not have attended in decades -- or ever.

Things are getting complicated for the nation's 300 or so evangelical-Christian colleges. As the evangelical world continues to fracture, schools once known mainly for their conservative politics and their no-sex-before-marriage policies are adapting to a generation of students who see the world in a more subtle way. As conservative as their parents on abortion, and still mostly committed to premarital chastity, these young evangelicals want to talk about formerly touchy subjects: race, divorce, homosexuality, single parenthood. And they want a school that supports their commitment to social-justice causes.

An 86-year-old nun from Cleveland who works for a Catholic anti-poverty lobbying group has been selected to deliver the closing prayers one night during the Democratic National Convention. "I think you have a different perspective when you've lived some history," says Catherine Pinkerton, a member of the Cleveland-based religious order Congregation of St. Joseph who once served as principal of the West Side secondary school it founded, St. Joseph Academy. Pinkerton says that she has never been an activist for either political party but that she admires Barack Obama's "vision of where we stand as a nation and where we stand among nations" and agreed to deliver the benediction at the request of his campaign.