As mentioned yesterday, Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute has produced a short discourse on the Pope's not-yet released encyclical on social justice over at First Things. Novak's article is to the encyclical what condoms are to intercourse: Novak is trying, and trying desperately, to frustrate Pope Benedict's intention in issuing an encyclical on social justice.

Pope Benedict is, of course, a pastor. By training he is also a theologian. An encyclical is a means by which the Pope teaches Catholic truth, which truth is intimately and intrinsically tied to the revelation of Jesus Christ. In other words, the truth Pope Benedict will proclaim is a theological truth. Yet, not once does Novak mention theology and the only reference he makes to a theologian is to a statement of Pope John Paul II's that has no particular theological content.

As the White House readies its plan for finding "common ground" on reproductive health issues and reducing the need for abortion, a major debate has emerged over how to package the plan's two major components: preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion.

Many abortion rights advocates and some Democrats who want to dial down the culture wars want the White House to package the two parts of the plan together, as a single piece of legislation. The plan would seek to reduce unwanted pregnancies by funding comprehensive sex education and contraception and to reduce the need for abortion by bolstering federal support for pregnant women. Supporters of the approach say it would force senators and members of Congress on both sides of the abortion battle to compromise their traditional positions, creating true common ground that mirrors what President Obama has called for.

When Tuesday's hearings in Sacramento on proposed changes in California's method of executing convicted murderers veered into a discussion of why solutions to the state's budget crisis ought to include the abolition of capital punishment, it was another example of how divided our attitude on this issue remains.

In fact, if you look back through this vexed issue's history here, what emerges clearly is a deep ambivalence -- a popular unwillingness to renounce the death penalty as a symbol of the state's ultimate sanction against criminality, and a persistent current of reluctance to see it imposed too frequently. It's that division that sets California apart from most other capital punishment states.

When I was growing up, it was almost part of the catechism that Catholics backed labor unions. We were taught that papal encyclicals on social and economic justice put us on the side of legitimate demands from workers. That centuries-old support received new clarity in June of 2009 when Catholic health workers and the U.S. Bishops delivered "Respecting the Just Rights of Workers."

In the spirit of the papal social encyclicals, this new document puts the American Church in support of union rights for the 21st century, which logically includes teachers in Catholic schools.

Twelve-year-old Josh Garcia courageously took the stage. Fighting back tears, he told how he came home from school one day to find that his father had been taken into an immigration detention facility.

His father, an entrepreneur who had created dozens of jobs, was "exactly the kind of person we want in this country." And there wasn't a dry eye in the place as this young American boy told the audience how the next time he saw his father, he was traumatized to find him "in a prison" surrounded by men with guns.

Last winter, I wrote for these pages about reports of religious abuse at Guantanamo ("The Secret Weapon," December 5, 2008). Among the abuses that had been reported were desecration of the Qur'an, prevention and mockery of prayer, and sexual assaults intended to undermine piety. I argued that the victims of religious abuse considered it worse than anything else they had endured at Guantanamo, though allegations of this kind of abuse have been mainly ignored by the American media.

Some readers responded to the stories of abuse in my article by insisting that terrorists are trained to lie. I couldn't prove they were wrong. If you had asked me when I wrote the article which of the abuse claims I thought was most likely to have been fabricated by detainees, I would have said it was the stories of forced prostration before a makeshift shrine to a false god. It seemed too outrageous. What could contradict America's commitment to religious freedom more than coerced apostasy?

On July 10, President Obama and his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, will meet for the first time. They will like each other and find much in common. It is reasonable to suppose that their conversation will be framed as much by the Holy Father's recent encyclical writing as by the president’s policy initiatives.
Indeed, Veritas in Caritate (“Truth in Charity”) – the title and substance of Benedict XVI’s much awaited and soon to be released third encyclical will likely provide an ample agenda for the Rome meeting.

It's not every day that the US government gives Nigeria a shout-out for a job well done. After all, the State Department labels this African nation's human rights record "poor" and its 2007 presidential election "seriously flawed."

But this week, the State Department praised Africa's most populous country for its progress in prosecuting human traffickers and helping their victims. "I can't talk about Nigeria enough," said Ambassador Luis Cde-Baca, who leads the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

In only five years, Nigeria has advanced from the State Department's human-trafficking "watch list" to its top tier of countries fully complying with standards to eliminate servitude.

For decades - from at least the time Joe Torre was a backup first baseman with the Milwaukee Braves - and ever further back than that, the political right has complained that government is the problem, government programs don't work, and are too costly and inefficient. Meanwhile the right's mantra has also been that private enterprise does everything better because it's more creative, innovative and efficient than government.

Odd, then, that private insurers fear government competition. Odd they are so dead set against what's being called "the public option."

What's the fear?

The murder, like previous violence against abortion providers, certainly damages the anti-abortion cause. But it will not derail it, nor should it. As recent public opinion polls indicate, the American people have become more uneasy with abortion, not less. Much has changed since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Thanks to the widespread use of ultrasound during pregnancy, the demand for infertility treatments, and the educational efforts of the anti-abortion movement, the average American knows more than ever before about the biology of embryonic and fetal life. It is no longer possible to dismiss unborn life, even in its earliest stages, as merely a "lump of cells."