This article was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s online “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns. It appeared on May 1, 2012. There is a link to Krason’s monthly column at the SCSS website (www.catholicsocialscientists.org). Since August 2012, his column also appears at Crisismagazine.com. This article considers weaknesses in present-day conservatism, and how embracing certain principles of Catholic social teaching could rectify those weaknesses.

Stephen M. Krason presented this talk at the “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” rally in Buffalo, New York on June 8, 2012. It was one of many that were held around the U.S. that day, to show opposition to the attempt by the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services to mandate that religious entities provide free contraceptives (including abortifacients) and sterilization procedures in their health insurance programs.

This paper discusses ideas on how to incorporate Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services into a Catholic college nursing curriculum. Questions addressed include: What does the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops say is the purpose of the Ethical and Religious Directives? Is the profession of nursing a particularly difficult one in which to incorporate Catholic teachings? Can we share with our students a code of nursing ethics that supports the Ethical and Religious Directives? Promoting faculty and students’ learning about Catholic teachings may be a step to changing what Blessed John Paul II called the culture of death into one of life.

This article was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s online “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns. It appeared on April 1, 2012. There is a link to Krason’s monthly column at the SCSS website (www.catholicsocialscientists.org). Since August 2012, his column also appears at Crisismagazine.com. This article considers new, serious threats to free speech in the contemporary Western world.

In this article, the author makes a proposal, based upon Concordian economics—which stresses cooperative effort and concern for the good of the community—to stimulate investment, without government stimulus packages or “bailouts,” so as to bring the U.S. out of its current relative economic stagnation.

The conventional defense of same-sex “marriage” is that it frees men and women to choose the way they define marriage, but that calls for something that is quite impossible because marriage is a social reality. Like all such products of socialization, it is learned behavior, and it is learned from the established cultural norms. When we contemplate marriage, we confront an institution that we do not define for the simple reason that it does not matter to the individual what he means by marriage, what matters is what his or her mate means by marriage. That shared value is by necessity learned because it is a commitment that cannot otherwise be communicated in a credible way.

The following is the text of an address delivered by Professor George at the twentieth anniversary conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in New York, October 2012. George identifies the intellectual roots of recent threats to conscience rights—especially for people of faith—in the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s 2008 report that, he argues, makes ideological claims rather than using scientific evidence to support the denial of conscience rights to medical professionals in the areas of birth control and abortion. (This essay will be included in a forthcoming collection of George’s work to be published by ISI Books.)

The following is a slightly revised version of the address delivered by His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan during the Twentieth-Anniversary Conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in New York, October 2012. Drawing on his experience as Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Egan offers five rules for the Church’s episcopal leadership: focus on what is essential; don’t be distracted from basic duties; make self-assessments based on documented facts; foster good relationships with priests, lay advisors, and non-Catholics; and pray for the people of the diocese.