the Web Editors 5-19-2016
Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock

Speaker Paul Ryan has struck a compromise deal with the Department of Treasury to help Puerto Rico restructure its debt and establish a financial oversight board.

Jim Wallis 5-19-2016

Since all the political news is terrible and only getting worse, I decided to reflect on something very personal this week — about a great event that happened this weekend.

A July 2015 report by the National Catholic Reporter, which is viewed as a liberal outlet, found a few dioceses that offered up to three weeks of paid maternity or family leave while most – including Chicago, until now – made employees use accrued time off and sick days, or up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, as guaranteed by a 1993 federal law, when they gave birth to a child or adopted a child.

Caroline Barnett 5-18-2016

For LGBTQ people of faith, Twitter is becoming a vital space for a diversity of stories to emerge. And these stories — whether of the pastor down the street or of the people sitting in the pews — allow those of us lucky enough to see them a glimpse into the lives of everyday superheroes.

What do the tango, Islam and conscientious objection have in common? They are just three of the references that Pope Francis made in his latest blockbuster interview.

Speaking to the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, Francis reflected on issues affecting the church and society as a whole.

Catholic sisters globally would be better equipped to carry out their work if they could become deacons, the head of a global network of nuns has said, an important marker in the sharp debate over women deacons that Pope Francis opened last week.

“We are already doing so many things that resemble what a deacon would do, although it would help us to do a bit more service if we were ordained deacons,” Sister Carmen Sammut, president of the International Union of Superiors General, or UISG, told RNS.

Kierra Gray 5-18-2016

Eight years into the nation's first African-American presidency and amid an increasingly racialized election cycle, what can we say about the state of black America? According to a new report by the National Urban League, it’s mixed: African Americans have made strides but a clear opportunity gap persists.

Paul Jeffrey / UMNS / RNS

The United Methodist Church is struggling to maintain unity amid deep divisions over Scripture and sexuality, the presiding bishop of America’s second-largest Protestant denomination acknowledged.

Juliet Vedral 5-17-2016

So as I sit here and eat my low-calorie string cheese, I feel compelled to stop and contemplate for a moment what it means for me to bear God’s image.

Melanie Ollett 5-17-2016

I know that this child’s life and mine have intersected by a miraculous plan, and that however temporary, we will both enjoy what we can from how our stories have come together. He tells me stories of what it was like at his birth family’s house, we talk about the differences and similarities between his birth household and my household now, and together we make more crazy plans. 

God calls us among all of our anxieties, voiced and unvoiced­, to keep on living. To pray for one another, to argue with one another, to take the terrifying chance to say “I love you” to one another every day because we know the other needs to hear it.