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The perspective by George Weigel on June 21 contains a very important point about pre-emptive attacks when waging a just war: “… a crucial moral point: faced with certain aggression, responsible public authorities need not wait for the aggressor’s first blow to fall.” Weigel is entirely correct about this; no teaching of the Catholic Church about just wars ever said that you must wait until attacked.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has stipulated that a two-thirds majority always is required to elect a new pope, undoing a more flexible procedure introduced by Pope John Paul II.

Those attending the 17th-Annual Catholic Family Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center June 28 to July 1 will have an opportunity to obtain a plenary indulgence.

On Monday, June 18, a Howard County police officer succumbed to injuries he received in a traffic stop from last week.

Monsignor Maurice Shields, a 1943 graduate of St. Brigid School, Canton, and a 1947 graduate of Calvert Hall College High School, then located in Baltimore, recently celebrated his Golden Anniversary as a priest in Mobile, Ala.

The annual Catholic Community of St. Michael and St. Patrick, Fells Point, carnival will continue with its second and last weekend June 29-July 1 at the corner of E. Lombard and S. Wolfe streets.

A funeral Mass for Deacon John J. Briscoe of Baltimore, was offered June 25 at St. Peter Claver, Baltimore. Deacon Briscoe – who had suffered from heart problems and high blood pressure – died June 17 at Levindale Geriatric Center and Hospital in Baltimore. He was 81.

So, “a growing number of the faithful” are responsible for the “demoralizing of priests” in the aftermath of the sexual abuse of minors in the church (CR, June 21)?

VATICAN CITY – Kurt Waldheim, former U.N. secretary-general and president of Austria, died June 14 at the age of 88. The longtime diplomat, who died of heart failure in his home in Vienna, Austria, had been a controversial figure for his World War II role as an officer in the German army, and Vatican interaction with him in the late 1980s and early 1990s sparked criticism from Jewish groups.