The Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who authored The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, won the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature. Through his writings, he had made the world aware of the dehumanizing and repressive measures of the former Soviet Union.

Recent research done by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported some amazing statistics about Catholics and their knowledge of the faith. According to the research, 40% of Catholics did not realize that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. 46 % of Catholics could not name Bethlehem as Jesus’ native place.

In the late 1800s, Sonora Smart Dodd, along with her five siblings, was raised by her father, a single parent and a Civil War Veteran. Once, when she heard her pastor preach a sermon about Mother’s Day, she was deeply moved, reflecting on what her own father had done. When she was a child, widowers frequently put their children in the care of others. But, Sonora’s father had raised his entire family by himself.

News reports of the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, the government’s handling of the terrorist attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya and the seizure of AP reporters’ phone records by the Justice Department have plunged President Obama’s administration into a maelstrom of controversy. Partisan discussions of the issues have raised many questions that remain unanswered.