Not long ago, I received an email from Dr. Stephen M. Colecchi, director of the Office of International Justice and Peace for the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), supporting my view that nuclear disarmament is a pro-life issue. This position repeated a long-standing, but seldom repeated 1983 statement of the bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, placing peace issues alongside abortion in the Catholic conscience.

A little more than a week later, I received a more lengthy communication from Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee in Washington taking me to task for a column I wrote about the bishops' concerns about the place of abortion in health-care reform legislation.

The different points of view and tone from two offices in Washington advocating *Catholic teaching suggest to me that the USCCB suffers from bureaucratic schizophrenia. I hope I am wrong.

Should Michael Moore be named "Catholic of the Year"? Some people love his films and some hate them: but his newest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," provokes such passion on either side that -- on that count alone -- it becomes a tribute to his skill as filmmaker. Avoiding a film review here, let me offer reasons for considering "Capitalism" a special kind of Catholic achievement.

The Catholic bishops made it into the White House briefing, not once but twice the first weeks of October. Presidential spokesman, Robert Gibbs stated on two occasions (10/7 and 10/13) that the bishops had misinterpreted abortion in the Health Care legislation. Gibbs said, " . . . there's a fairly clear federal law (The Hyde Amendment) prohibiting the federal use of money for abortion."

Despite these White House statements, some bishops now threaten to oppose health care legislation. The official communication from Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee comes close to shouting out "You lie!" when it concludes that "...a vote for H.R. 3200 is a vote for tax-subsidized abortion on demand."

So who's right here?

The Cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico, interrupts the low skyline with its French Gothic tower, clashing with the Spanish Mission-style celebrated in this precious city's architecture. The "foreignness" of the Cathedral is metaphor for the reign of Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), the first Bishop of Santa Fe. His governance style clashed with the almost oldest Catholicism of the continental United States and resulted in the excommunication of Padre Antonio José Martínez (1793-1867), the curate of Taos. This is not a church history lesson where one cleric is a villain and the other is a saint. Rather, it is an all too familiar clash of cultures, complicated by competing egos.

With the leaking to the press of a military report on Afghanistan, pundits claim that President Obama has two drastically contrasting options: either:

1) dramatically increase troop strength everywhere as suggested by General Stanley McChrystal; or,
2) concentrate troops along the Pakistan border to focus on al-Qaeda as favored by Vice-President Joe Biden.

Neither strategy, however, accounts for the religious dimension in what is a fundamentally religious question.

The recent and unanimous vote of the U.N. Security Council endorsing nuclear disarmament is cause for rejoicing in Catholic America. Disarmament is a pro-life issue and the Security Council's September session with President Obama as chairman made a significant advance beyond the perennial rhetoric about atomic weapons. If and when Obama's effort at the United Nations' session becomes a policy to be endorsed politically in Congress, I think pro-life Catholics will be bound by conscience to support it.

Secularism is often considered the result of atheism, but history disproves that myth. American Secularism is a form of public neutrality about belief or unbelief. It is more about agnosticism and religious tolerance than about atheism and anti-clericalism. Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican officials are now promoting "Catholic Secularism," and that might have profound effects on Catholic America and the separation of Church and State.

A law has been proposed in Congress that no woman be forced to have an abortion. Yet, Catholic bishops like Charles Chaput of Denver and lay organizations like the Catholic League have condemned this piece of legislation. Would it be logical, therefore, to conclude that because they oppose this legislation, they are promoting government-ordered abortions? After all, if you are against a law that protects a woman's right NOT to have an abortion, are you not advocating that it be visited upon her?

This logic is skewed, of course. The legislation that clearly states a woman's right NOT to have an abortion is the often-proposed, never passed, Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA= S. 1173 of the 110th Congress), which includes this line: "Every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child." However, the legislation
goes on to state: Section 4:a reads: "It is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect the life or health of the woman"

The Aug. 31 press conference when Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino announced his resignation raised my admiration of the Catholic Church. After all, the secular world uses crude imagery like "Cash for Clunkers" to describe how to move on. Catholicism is far more artful.

There it was on non-stop television: the Catholic rite of the Mass of the Resurrection. True, the networks responded because a celebrity was being buried: Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, last of three brothers who have left an enormous political legacy to America. But our Catholic liturgy was not invented for celebrities and this mass in a Roxbury church was not very much different from the funeral for any Catholic. So, did Kennedy's liberal politics interrupt a ritual meant to unite and not divide?

The Vatican has launched an investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the United States and its members. For those who only know religious women as "nuns" or "sisters" and usually don't bother about the canonical difference between an order with solemn vows and congregations or secular institutes, this may not seem very important. But as anyone who has played chess knows, losing your queen is a recipe for checkmate on your king. The pope -- can we consider him Catholicism's "king"? -- will put the church at an impossible disadvantage if the investigation makes us lose the ministries of these dedicated women.