The health of not just our citizens but our national soul demands that we do a better job, that we work hard to foster and nourish life, both in the womb and outside of it.

After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress.

"Our lives are at their best when centered not upon ourselves but upon babies!" Cardinal Timothy Dolan made this contention at a gathering hosted by the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, which brought together evangelicals and Catholics to celebrate religious liberty.

Once in a while, a government agency adopts a policy that is logical, hardheaded, based on experience and unswayed by cheap sentiment. This may be surprising enough to make you reconsider your view of bureaucrats. But not to worry: It usually doesn't last.

Martin Richard's life ended as he waited at the Boston Marathon finish line on a local holiday. He was there to celebrate his dad's victory with his family. Instead, he is dead and his family's life is changed forever.

In the face of the darkness that befell Newton, Conn., there has been an expectation of something more, but it doesn't have to do with legislation. Father Peter Cameron, a Dominican priest, preached to the families gathered at St. Rose of Lima Church there the Sunday after the school massacre about the hope that he saw in them.

Have you noticed all the talk about the "inevitability" of same-sex marriage?

"We love you." The words warmed the chill during the first of two days of Supreme Court oral arguments on the future of marriage law in the United States. The scene outside the Court building, where most of the media was camped out, reminded me of the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible. Only here, everyone was using the same word, but couldn't quite agree on what it meant.

Rome -- "May God forgive you." That's Cardinal Timothy Dolan's translation of a joke that Pope Francis told the College of Cardinals a day after being elected the 267th pontiff.

Recently, a group of women gathered to insist that expanded abortion access be a legislative priority in New York. Why they would feel the need to do so is a good question, one with disturbing overtones.

Here in the hall, she casts an unlikely silhouette -- unassuming in a lineup of proud stares, challenging us once more to look up and draw strength from stillness.

The pope has renounced the papal throne. Long live the progressive pope! Such are the rallying cries from establishment voices wanting to see the Catholic Church loosen up now that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to step down. But maybe people should listen to the Church's actual views.

The spin on the women's health issue could give you whiplash. Nationally and in my home state of New York, there's a whole lot of manipulation going on.

On the morning of the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling, I felt a chill, and it wasn't the bitter cold. After Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, some 500 or so New Yorkers walked through the streets of Midtown Manhattan, in front of God, man and Grand Central Station, praying for life, love and mercy.

We've been wandering in the desert for 40 years, declared Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley. It was an ever-present reflection during the week that marked four decades of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion.

A former British airlines worker was just told by a European human-rights court that she does, in fact, have the right to wear a crucifix on her neck. That such a thing would even have to go to court seems quite the sign of the times.

When did "women's health" become reduced to just contraception and abortion? So much so, that all knees bend at the altar of Planned Parenthood, which works hard to ensure that this remains the case

There was a young man -- 23 at most -- quietly saying his morning prayers on Capitol Hill on the third day of 2013, and it seemed for a moment like a warm ray of light in the midst of a blistering cold spell.

In essence, if you are Catholic in this country you no longer can own a company, Frank O'Brien explains.

"The greatest gift which America has received from the Lord is the faith which has forged its Christian identity," Pope John Paul II wrote in a document on the Church in America in 1999. Here at the end of 2012, the words might be the rallying cry of the season -- a reminder, a challenge, a warning -- and a gift to be pondered born of a grotto in Bethlehem.