Monday RNS starts off with a story about events that took place in 1994, when Archbishop William Levada-who replaced Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith-was the Archbishop of Portland. William Lobdell reports that back then, Levada offered a simple answer for why the Oregon archdiocese shouldn’t have been ordered to pay the costs of raising a child fathered by a church worker at a parish. In her relationship with a seminarian who has since become a priest, the child’s mother had engaged “in unprotected intercourse … when (she) should have known that could result in pregnancy,” the church maintained in its answer to the lawsuit. The legal proceeding got little attention at the time. And the fact that the church-which considers birth control a sin-seemed to be arguing that the woman should have protected herself from pregnancy provoked no comment. But recent media attention has been embarrassing for Levada, who has been named chief guardian of Catholic doctrine worldwide.

We continue our analysis of the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. Deborah Jerome-Cohen says that even some skeptical Palestinians are beginning to be more optimistic: One day, they hope, stories of struggles with Israeli forces might form the foundation tales of a Palestinian state, in the same way that Israelis invoke their pre-1948 struggles against the British. Teams of experts say the best way to change the narrative is this: Get people working again.