BY IAN BARNSTEAD

The Culture of Death. This is the thing every Catholic fights. But how? Ask most Franciscan students and they will tell you to pray outside the abortion clinic, attend the March for Life, go on a mission trip and either evangelize to beach-goers or help people in a poor country. Don't get me wrong, these things are great and noble and worth anyone's effort, but this is not how to defeat the Culture of Death.

BY TANYA CHICHESTER

One month ago we remembered that in the past 40 years more than 55 million babies have been aborted. Everyone's pro-life passion burned so brightly while marching with over half a million like-minded people. We prayed and realized the gravity of the situation. We were filled with such conviction – and then what?

BY ELIZABETH WONG

It has come at last. After two and a half strange and bittersweet weeks, it has come. Pope Benedict XVI has resigned.

It was such a sudden announcement that nobody knew how to respond. The responses varied from foreboding predictions of the End Times (despite the Catholic theology that teaches we cannot know "the day nor the hour"), to conspiracy-style commentary from media voices about "politics" in the Vatican.

It varied from simple sadness that our beloved Benedict is departing, to random humor due to no one knowing how to react (comedian Steven Colbert's chaplain, Father James Martin, on "the pope 'raising the bar' when it comes to giving up things for Lent.")

It also varied from the worldwide voices on the most likely papal "candidates," to "where will Benedict go now?"

Answers to some of these questions came readily enough, such as the confirmation that he will retire to the Papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, and that no, the Vatican didn't force him to resign, he did it out of his free will and something called discernment. As Father John Hollowell of "On This Rock" blog pointed out, "For their own sanity, (the media just has) to believe that it really is a bunch of cardinals who are fighting for the job and politicking and paying each other off with promises of Vatican treasures."

If my feelings are anything like the average person, I've only just been able to register all that is going on. It's probably better that way—Benedict announced his resignation suddenly, but he did give us just enough time to calm our spinning heads, get back on our feet and prepare to welcome his successor.

BY RYAN ADAMS

LIBERAL COLUMNIST

It is an unfortunate and embarrassing fact, for me, as one who considers it a point of pride to be born and raised in the United States, that our beloved nation has the 10th highest firearms mortality rate in any nation in the world. The embarrassment continues when one considers the fact that this places us at the top among industrialized nations. How is it possible that we have this problem when the rest of the developed world doesn't?

One of perhaps the most common, and loudest, in the wake of the recent tragedies of gun violence, is that there simply isn't enough gun control in the United States. However, can we really say that gun control will help the problem?