Nobel Peace Prize honoree Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is now among the hallowed company of actress Katharine Hepburn, the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, the Lunar Year, distinguished sailors, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Cowboys of the Silver Screen, the celebrated singer Kate Smith, pioneering African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, and the Negro Baseball League.

Media portrayals of retired Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels' meeting with a sex abuse victim, the victim's family and the abuser, Bishop Roger Vangheluwe of Brugge, Belgium, have not given a complete picture of what transpired, says the lawyer representing Cardinal Danneels.

Professor Raimon Panikkar, one of the greatest scholars of the 20th century in the areas of comparative religion, theology, and inter-religious dialogue, died at his home in Tavertet, near Barcelona, Spain, Aug. 26. He was 91.

Aug. 15 marked the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which set out his vision for the renewal of Catholic universities and colleges. The anniversary passed quietly, with little of the controversy that greeted the release of the document in 1990.

DALLAS -- U.S. women religious leaders say they are today more spiritually rounded and more committed to their Vatican II vision of church than in any time in recent memory. They also say they have strengthened bonds across congregational lines and with women religious overseas. They trace these welcomed fresh energies to responses they have been forced to hone out as part of two Vatican investigations into their lifestyles and leadership, responses that have involved many hours of self-discernment and strategic planning.

CLEVELAND -- Holly Nixon used to need only 10 minutes before the 9 a.m. Mass to pick up her elderly, disabled mother and find a parking spot close to the sanctuary door. That was before St. William Catholic Church in Euclid merged with nearby St. Robert Bellarmine, which then closed, shifting hundreds of people into St. William's pews.

Analysis The Vatican announcement that the attempted ordination of women is a “grave crime” to be dealt with according to the same procedures as the sexual abuse of minors exposes the way those running our church actually think. In attempting to explain revised norms to church canons, they reveal the legalistic inner workings of their minds, and affirm unsettling psychological patterns of thought.

Justice and the law are, if not twins, close relatives. That’s what the popular images project. Blindfolded Lady Justice and the scales of justice are the iconography of the profession. Statues and sculptures depicting the ideas are prominent in our courthouses and on shelves in lawyers’ offices.

Fr. Kenneth R. Beale, an active-duty Air Force major and chaplain, was preparing for his ninth deployment since 1996. This time around, he was scheduled to go to Afghanistan in March. Beale, pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Community on Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., the largest base in the free world, was scrambling to find his replacement. At times Reservist priests or civilian parish priests step in, other times he must ask retired clergy to cover his absence. There are some 1,500 Catholics at Eglin.

Archbishop Charles Chaput has characterized President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association as “sincere, compelling, articulate -- and wrong” (See story). It would be easier to agree with the archbishop if his own arguments were not also wrong, and wrong in ways that will prove as unfruitful for the future of Catholicism’s relationship with American culture as he claims Kennedy’s arguments were.

Analysis In statements, speeches, interviews and at least one pastoral letter, bishops in various parts of the world have begun raising provocative questions about whether something intrinsic to the Roman Catholic church -- perhaps its clerical culture, its manner of governance, its exercise of authority, or a combination of such elements -- has either caused or abetted the priest sex abuse tragedy.