Last week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) conducted a mass along the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona. Standing in front of a 30-foot-high rusted gate that separates the US from Mexico, eight bishops, from El Paso to Atlanta, prayed in both Spanish and English. They faced a crowd of about 800 people on the American side. Behind them, on the Mexican side of the fence, a hundred or so people peeked through the slates.

In the documentary God Loves Uganda, director Roger Ross Williams and crew peer into the evangelical crusade to infuse African culture with values of the Christian Right. The film focuses on the works of the International House of Prayer – an evangelical, Christian mission organization based in Kansas City. The International House of Prayer, or (oddly enough, IHOP), is one of the many conservative, American missions organizations working in the African continent. 

Black Catholics confront a moral dilemma in the upcoming presidential election: vote with their church or vote with the party that they have long preferred to keep the first African-American president in office four more years. While African-American Catholics are relatively few in number, they may represent enough of the black vote to make a difference in the outcome if they choose to bestow or withhold their support.