Kansas City, Mo. – The 2009 National Catholic Youth Conference opened Thursday evening, Nov. 19, at the downtown Sprint Center here with a welcome by National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministers executive director Bob McCarty. An estimated 22,000 people were attending. This year’s conference is titled “Christ Reigns.”

CUAUTITLAN IZCALLI, Mexico -- The Mexican bishops' conference rebuked narcotics-trafficking cartels for their murderous ways and demanded that Mexico's politicians crack down on the corruption and impunity that permits the illicit drug industry to flourish. The bishops' Nov. 12 letter was a long-anticipated response to the issue of violence in Mexico that has claimed more than 13,000 lives over the past three years.

San Salvador, El Salvador Salvadorans from every segment of society gathered here Nov. 14 - 16 to commemorate the 1989 murders of six Jesuits, and their housekeeper and her daughter. Many used local events to reflect on El Salvador's progress since the end of the country's civil war in 1992.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago has several times recently addressed the relationship between bishops and ordinary Catholics and how that relationship affects the manner in which we all live out a life of faith. He says the relationship is not about power, but his own role in the long standing liturgy debate suggests that bishops exert considerable power.

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Nov. 16 that Catholic publications, universities or other organizations that insist on complete independence from their bishops are “sectarian, less than fully Catholic.”

Religious Life -- Analysis As the church marks “The Year of the Priest” from June 2009 to June 2010, it is worth noting that a whole generation of extraordinary priests is now passing from the scene into retirement or final rest.

U.S. women religious superiors will no longer have to supply to the Vatican certain controversial information, including sisters' ages, recent financial audits, and property ownership, as part of the ongoing Apostolic Visitation of religious congregations.

A blog posting by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York criticizing The New York Times for unfair and even anti-Catholic reporting of the church generated much discussion online and off. Here, two NCR writers weigh-in. Tom Roberts says The "anti-Catholic!" cry is a cheap, easy accusation, and Joe Ferullo tries to answer the question Why does the media 'go after' the church?

Charity Sr. Louise Akers, telling the story of how she was dismissed after 40 years of teaching in the Cincinnati archdiocese for not retracting her support for women’s ordination, held more than 2,000 Call to Action conference delegates spellbound here, and in the process united two women’s issues precious to many Catholics: the ban on women’s ordination and the Vatican’s secretive investigation of U.S. women religious.

The results of one of the most comprehensive studies of the status of women in the United States were released Oct. 16. The conclusions drawn from the data in “The Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Changes Everything,” by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, have the potential to change the discussion of public policy on a broad range of issues from the workplace to the family living room.

What the Second Vatican Council left unresolved has remained unresolved to the present day: Conscience within Catholicism is tugged in two interpretive directions. Gulf between personalist and ecclesial views of conscience remain the backdrop of Catholic moral debates today