A year ago, President Obama thrilled many religious Americans and worried some secular supporters by announcing that he would not only keep the faith-based infrastructure President Bush had constructed across the government but would expand it, adding a marquee council of faith leaders to advise him.But as the council prepares to end its first term and issue its report, some faith leaders across the ideological spectrum -- including some Obama allies -- say the operation may be more about window dressing than results.

The Obama administration is moving ahead with the development of new nuclear weapons components at three key weapons facilities at the same time it is conducting a sweeping review of U.S. nuclear weapons policies that could lead to further slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. For the moment, U.S. nuclear weapons policies appear to be running in contrary directions, and while some critics of U.S. nuclear policy are cautiously optimistic, they are also worried President Obama's nuclear disarmament vision is not yet being supported by concrete policy actions.

Last week at West Point, President Obama cited his reasons for sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama spoke eloquently. He insisted our cause is just. It is necessary, it is crucial. Killing Afghanis is the way to peace. The oxymorons rolled off his tongue. Apparently, it does not matter that wars are bankrupting us. Or sending our young to die. Or leaving them psychologically impaired. Or degrading the environment. Or, bitterest of ironies, breeding a new generation of terrorists. It doesn't seem to matter that most Americans want the war to stop, that most Afghanis want us out. It doesn't even matter that only a hundred Al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan. The rest have taken refuge in Pakistan. Our new war president says the war must continue.

If there were a Nobel Prize for Theology, large parts of President Barack Obama's Oslo speech could be cut and pasted into an acceptance speech for it. The Peace Prize speech dealt with war and he made a clear case from the start for the use of force when necessary. While he began with political arguments for this position, his rationale took on an increasingly religious tone as the speech echoed faith leaders and theologians going back to the origins of Christianity.

The decision by President Obama to send additional troops to Afghanistan saddens me. I believe it is a mistake, it is the wrong direction for U.S. foreign policy, and it is disappointing to many of us in the faith community and our friends who spearhead the on-the-ground development efforts in Afghanistan and around the world. We needed a new approach to the very difficult and complicated situation in Afghanistan, and this isn't it. We were promised fundamental change in the direction of U.S. policy around the world, and this isn't it.

Catholic groups with a stake in matters of war and peace were alternately hopeful and dejected by President Barack Obama's plan to add 30,000 troops to the war effort in Afghanistan. "I think he's making a tragic and horrible mistake," David Robinson, head of Pax Christi USA, said of Obama during a Dec. 2 telephone interview with Catholic News Service from Pax Christi headquarters in Erie, Pa. "The irony of him announcing this fateful escalation the week before (Obama accepts) the Nobel Peace Prize, this is Greek tragedy."

Gen. Eric Shinseki was famously shunned by the Bush administration for daring to state the true costs of occupying Iraq. As President Obama's secretary of veterans affairs, he is, thankfully, no less candid about the grinding problems veterans face at home. They lead the nation in depression, suicide, substance abuse and homelessness, according to data that Mr. Shineski is delivering in salvos in his current role. About one-third of all adult homeless men are veterans, and an average night finds an estimated 131,000 of them from five decades bedding down on streets and in charity sanctuaries. About 3 in 100 of them are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem of homelessness for Vietnam veterans is, shamefully, well known. But the men and women in this growing cohort took just 18 months to find rock bottom, compared with the five years-plus of the previous generation's veterans.

To see the spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians making his rounds in Washington this week -- meeting with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Senate leader Reid and speaking at the Brookings Institution today -- you could make that case. In his talk yesterday at Georgetown University (sponsored by the left-leaning Center for American Progress), the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew spoke about the spiritual imperative for nonviolence, universal health care and reducing consumption to help the environment. But Bartholomew knows the political language of America, and he made a point in his talk to claim that these positions are neither left nor right, calling the Orthodox "one of the most conservative members of the Christian family."

Catholic leaders in Honduras lauded a political agreement that aimed to end the four-month political crisis sparked by a June coup that unseated President Manuel Zelaya. "There is no doubt that the agreement has brought peace to many Hondurans," Auxiliary Bishop Juan Pineda Fasquelle of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said in an e-mail to Catholic News Service Nov. 2. "Everything suggests that the path to electing a new president is much clearer." But the social tensions highlighted by the political dispute are far from resolved, said Bishop Pineda, who, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, was among religious leaders working behind the scenes to try to mediate the situation. What is needed now is a focused effort at bringing social justice to the countryside, he said, adding, "Without it, there will be no social peace."

While Israel has a right to protect its citizens, the security barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian territories and checkpoints along the barrier raise human rights concerns, said a U.S. cardinal. "The most tragic thing I have seen is the miles-long wall that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem and separates families and keeps farmers from the land that has been in their families for generations. It is humiliating and distressing," Cardinal John P. Foley, grand master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, told participants at the 11th international conference of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation Oct. 24.