Michelle Lelwica is an associate professor of religion at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn. She is the author of Starving for Salvation: The Spiritual Dimensions of Eating Problems Among American Girls and Women and The Religion of Thinness: Satisfying the Spiritual Hungers Behind Women’s Obsession With Food and Weight. She wrote a commentary for Newsweek and The Washington Post linking the quests for thinness and […]

Steve Reynolds is pastor of Capital Baptist Church in Annandale, Va., and author of Bod for God: The Four Keys to Weight Loss (2009). He urged his congregation to join him in a Christian-themed weight loss program. Reynolds eventually lost 100 pounds.

Read “Another Long Lent,” an April 8, 2011, essay in Commonweal magazine about the Philadelphia crisis by Nicholas P. Cafardi, Cafardi is a civil and canon lawyer and one of the original members of the USCCB’s National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth. He is the author of Before Dallas, a history of the clergy child sexual-abuse […]

Read a May 16, 2011, Q&A by Reuters with Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Justice Promoter in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its top expert on clerical sexual abuse issues, on the new Vatican guidelines.

Melani McAlister is an associate professor of American studies and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She participated in a February 2008 roundtable discussion about American evangelicals and the 2008 primaries at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion. She is also at work on a book about American evangelicals and global vision.

Read “The Fog of Scandal,” a May 12, 2011, essay in Commonweal magazine by Ana Maria Catanzaro, head of the clergy abuse review board for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. She recounts her experience and dismay at the revelations of the grand jury.

Read a June 1, 2011, Catholic News Service story, “John Jay report not just about mistakes in 1960s, says sex abuse expert,” featuring an interview with Monica Applewhite, an expert in abuse prevention strategies.

La Vita Weaver is the founder of Fit for God Ministries and the author of Fit for God: The 8-Week Plan That Kicks the Devil OUT and Invites Health and Healing IN. She says her belief in God helped her reduce from 200 pounds. She is based in Capital Heights, Md.

Read “What Caused the Crisis? Key findings of the John Jay College Study on clergy sexual abuse,” a story in the June 6, 2011, edition of America magazine by Kathleen McChesney, who was the first executive director of the Office for Child and Youth Protection of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.