The gospel parable this Sunday features idle laborers who wait all day in the marketplace for someone to hire them. Persistently high unemployment in the U.S. caused the poverty rate to jump to a 27-year high . . .

“Unpopular compassion” might be a way of describing the message of this Sunday’s readings. A movement is gaining traction to save the often-feared shark, many species of which have been hunted to near extinction . . .

Our God “is generous in forgiving,” this Sunday’s reading from the Book of Isaiah affirms. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said earlier this week that two American hikers jailed for espionage would be freed as a humanitarian gesture . . .

This Sunday’s gospel illuminates the human tendency not only to ensure that we get what is rightfully ours but that others get not a penny more than their share. When it comes to painful budget cuts needed to bring the nation’s ballooning debt under control . . .

The reading from the Book of Isaiah encourages us to “seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near.” If there is a silver lining to the destruction that occurred on 9/11, it might be this: Interfaith worship has doubled . . .

“The greatest anxiety experienced by Iraqi refugees, who have been welcomed in their hundreds of thousands into Syria, is the fear their host nation will become another Iraq, a country almost completely disintegrated . . . .”

The U.S. State Department has cited eight nations as the most serious violators of religious freedom, naming the same countries as the Bush administration had: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.