On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , Joe Carter examines the truth about condoms and disease:

In 2000, a Federal panel surveyed the published epidemiology literature and found there was not enough evidence to drawn an adequate conclusion. In other words, while we have sex educators claiming that condoms can “effectively reduce” the spread of STIs, we have known for a decade that there is no scientific basis for that broad-based claim.

Also today, George Weigel on the lay reform of Church and world :

If there is to be a reconstruction of the Christian roots of Western culture, that will most likely come, not from the clergy, but from the Christian laity: fathers and mothers who raise families in the truth, men and women at work in the fields of business, culture, the arts, the academy, the media, and politics. That was the teaching of Vatican II; that was the teaching of John Paul II in his 1990 encyclical on Christian mission, Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer) and the 1988 apostolic exhortation Christifideles Laici (Christ’s Lay Faithful); and that is a teaching the Church has yet to absorb.