This Sunday’s gospel focuses on questions surrounding the resurrection of the dead. Two years after many pundits questioned whether the Republican Party would survive their 2008 drubbing, the GOP came roaring back to life in midterm elections with major victories . . .

This Sunday’s first reading relates a terrifying scene of religious persecution and violence targeting Jewish people because of their faith. An al Qaeda attack that killed 58 worshippers and wounded scores more in a Catholic church in Baghdad . . .

This Sunday’s second reading promises that the Lord will “guard you from the evil one.” It appears that a Yemen-based plot to bomb U.S.-bound cargo planes was disrupted at the last moment by an al Qaeda defector . . .

The seven brothers and their mother who suffer horrific deaths in this week’s first reading declare that it is for God’s laws that we are dying. The question of the role of religious codes of law in U.S. law was addressed in one of the more unusual ballot measures decided Tuesday, . . .

“Drugs that are legal cause at least as much damage, if not more, than drugs that are illicit.”

After declining almost 50 percent from 1965 to 2005, the smoking rate of American adults has held steady since that time. About one in five Americans continue to smoke.