Sister Mary Ann Walsh

HBO explores the mystery of love April 5, when the network airs "God Is The Bigger Elvis." It is the story of Dolores Hart, a young starlet of the '50s and '60s who became a cloistered nun. The half-hour documentary, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012, reflects...

Reams of paper emanate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about how to "accommodate" religious groups that are upset by the recent HHS mandate. Yet for all the fallen trees, HHS ignores a neuralgic point: the government has overstepped its boundaries when it defines what constitutes...

The Amish are exempt from the entire health care reform law. So are members of Medi-Share, a program of Christian Care Ministry. Yet, when the Catholic Church asks for a religious exemption from just one regulation issued under the law -- the mandate that all employers, including religious institutions, must...

Jesus is often quoted for his saying to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." The rest of the quote could be a message to the Obama Administration: "Render unto God the things that are God's."

The current tensions over religious freedom come down to a simple fact: the...

Health and Human Services' recent attacks on freedom of religion show it is deaf to religious sensibilities. Even the Administration's resounding defeat on Jan. 11 when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the its reading of the First Amendment as "extreme," "untenable" and having "no merit," it couldn't unplug its...

Today I am giving my blog space to my colleague, Bernard Nojadera, who directs the U.S. bishops' critical office that works with clergy sexual abuse of children.

With 2012, the Catholic Church looks back on a decade of learning about a problem which may be decades or centuries old: the...

The welcome mat is out at Catholic churches across the country. Actually it's always out, but churches tend to emphasize their open arms and doors during Advent and Christmas and later on in Lent and at Easter.

Why now?

There's something in the season that makes you think of home...

Health and Human Services (HHS) acted to protect kids Dec. 7 when HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected a recommendation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to let stores sell powerful hormonal drugs to children over the counter.

Promoters of contraceptives immediately criticized this decision about Plan B-One Step, a...

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. So wrote Mark Twain, some say, and that was well before anyone saw the latest Pew Report.

Pew usually does creditable work but the November report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life makes one pause. In trying to get a...

The most memorable line since Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" has just come out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Ta da: "I'm not trying to get anyone off the hook here."

That telling quote comes from George Sheldon, acting assistant secretary for HHS's...

There seems to be a new unwritten reg at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It's the ABC Rule: Anybody But Catholics.

It showed up in a letter from HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to advise the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Office of...

The social media phenomenon offers both challenge and opportunity for the church. Social media reaches people -- millions are on Facebook and Twitter every day. The church cannot ignore them. They are interactive, however, and don't work when conversations are one-way. They involve dialogue, something not always welcome by clergy,...

Executions as a matter of political sport are unnerving. When an audience cheered at one debate because Texas Gov. Rick Perry has authorized 234 executions in a little more than 10 years, I got nervous. Such light-hearted reaction to a heavy-hearted reality reflects ill on us as a people.

Late night comics who mock the church may have set the tone of the government's current salvos against religious freedom. Who would have thought that the disdain for religion by the cheap-laughs crowd would become part of the federal agenda?

At least it seems that way. NBC lauds Jay...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is picky when it comes to religious exemptions from its rules implementing the nation's new affordable health care bill. Right now HHS has such a narrow standard as to who operates a religious ministry, Jesus himself couldn't pass muster.

HHS has...

Scripture can speak personally to each of us, but this Sunday's readings at Mass on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 seem to have been penned just for this occasion.

Catholic Churches worldwide use the same scripture readings each Sunday. They follow a set, repeated pattern...

There are times when the church makes you feel proud. Priests' responses to 9/11, 10 years ago, is one of them.

This became evident as the U.S. Bishops' Office of Media Relations interviewed and sought reflections from a few persons for "The Catholic Church Remembers."

When it comes to church-state relations, both church and government historically have watched to keep the government out of church business. The U.S. Constitution acknowledged the significance of the role of the First Estate, when it declared that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting...

By an executive order in 2010, President Obama assured the nation that the new health reform law, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, would maintain conscience protections. Now the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could be heading in the opposite direction. Will the President assert...

The U.S. government and Congress play their own version of Whac-a-Mole when it comes to immigration. The results are about the same as when people play with mallets and pop-up moles at an arcade: lots of noise, mindless excitement and no productivity. Smack a mallet in one place and up...