50th Anniversary: Opening the Church to the World [1]by John W. O’Malley, a university professor at Georgetown and a Jesuit priest, is the author of “What Happened at Vatican II” and the forthcoming book “Trent: What Happened at the Council.”

50th Anniversary: Vatican II: A Half-Century Later, A Mixed [2]Legacy [2]by Sylvia Poggioli, NPR

50th Anniversary: How the second Vatican council responded to the modern world [3] by Andrew Brown, The Guardian

Election 2012 -- Poll: Voters give Romney higher marks on leadership [4]

Election 2012 -- Biden-Ryan debate highlights nation's Catholic political divide [5]

Election 2012 -- Will Biden-Ryan debate be a ‘Catholic smackdown’? [6]

Election 2012 -- From Latinos Post: Vice Presidential Debates 2012 Preview: What to Expect From Biden and Ryan [7]

Election 2012 -- Live chat: the (Catholic) vice presidential debate [8] by NCR Staff

Pope warns lapsed Catholics of "spiritual desertification" [9]

Philippines -- Over 50% of Catholics have not had church weddings—survey [10]

Files on Catholic priests in abuse cases to be made public [11]

Camden, N.J. -- Court rules against diocese in land dispute [12]

Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize [13]

National Book Awards finalists announced [14] Two of the fiction finalists — "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain, and Kevin Powers' "The Yellow Birds" — are first novels that deal with America's long military engagement in Iraq. The Middle East figures poignantly in the nonfiction category, which includes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid's book "House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East." Shadid died in February of an acute asthma attack when trying to leave Syria.

NCR's sister publication, Celebration, posts reflections on each day's Scripture reading. Here's a link: celebrationpublications.org/dailybread [15]. You may want to bookmark it. It's a great way to begin the day.