There was a time not too long ago when abortion was the primary issue when it came to choosing an elected official. In fact, it seemed as though that was the one litmus test for a candidate regardless of his or her position on other life issues, like capital punishment, or actual qualifications for office. Unfortunately, we tend to be a "black-and-white" society, looking for easy answers to some of life's most complex questions and important decisions.

Fifty years after the game-changing Second Vatican Council a new generation helps the church respond to today’s signs of the times. Here, Dom Erwin Krautler stresses the importance of paying attention to climate change because of its human cost.

Read more scholars on today's signs of the times.

The church calls on all people and governments to protect the future of God’s creation by addressing the urgent threat of global warming.

Even if St. Francis of Assisi wasn't an environmentalist in the modern sense of the word, Keith Warner, OFM finds modern Catholics can learn a lot from his love for creation.

[Read more from Keith Warner on Catholic environmentalism.]

Banning the Big Gulp isn’t enough to tip the scales in America’s obesity epidemic.

Gluttony is the only one of the not-so-magnificent seven that is literally a deadly sin; Americans have been proving that through congested arteries and heart disease for decades. Lifestyle-driven diabetes makes a cross of daily life for thousands and now even burdens U.S. children, many of whom contract the debilitating illness because of sedentary childhoods and poor eating habits.