The division of the world into "liberal" and "conservative" on every topic from politics to our taste in cuisine, clothes, or automobiles is one of the really restricting developments that has ever happened to us.

At the far western end of the axis that traverses Paris from the Louvre down the Champs Elysées and through the Arc de Triomphe is the Great Arch of La Défense. Designed by a sternly modernist Danish architect, the Great Arch is a colossal open cube: almost 40 stories tall, faced in glass and 2.47 acres of white Carrara marble.

While some journalists have been quite fair in their reporting on the new pope, unfortunately, they stand as the exceptions. Mostly we've heard a string of inaccuracies and inanities. Here are the four most common myths about Pope Benedict XVI.

Since 1991, BreakPoint has been telling you about the steady erosion of our religious freedom. That freedom is increasingly being limited to what goes on even inside our churches or inside our heads. Well, earlier this month, another chunk was taken out of our religious freedom, and then, as before, Christians have been all too quiet.

Reactions to the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Benedict XVI have been mixed, but on the whole Catholics are happy with the new Pope, says Mary Ann Glendon.

As a faithful Catholic I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am with the elevation of Joseph Ratzinger to the Chair of Peter. Pope Benedict XVI will be a powerful and important Pope. Please, everyone who reads this, of whatever faith, pray for this man who just had the weight of the world placed upon his shoulders.

"No opposition, I say!" he roared. "No opposition! Your conscience is your own affair, but you are my Chancellor!"

Effective private charities focus on human and spiritual, not just material needs.

Here's a curious thought. Maybe the single most important person in the 20th century's long struggle against communism wasn't Ronald Reagan. Maybe it wasn't Karol Wojtyla or Margaret Thatcher. Maybe it wasn't anyone whose name might leap to a cold warrior's mind for the most important figure in that long, dark struggle might have been a 10-year-old girl named Lucia dos Santos.

Many people have told me that they don't think they could "stand to live" if they needed a wheelchair like me. That's why I felt a little queasy about going to see Million Dollar Baby. But helping plan the first disability protest of the movie, in Chicago, I had a duty to see it.