Francis takes on credit institutions, pharmaceutical companies, mining, agribusiness, food corporations, arms manufacturers, technology and telecommunications giants who promote fake news, and neo-colonialism. Here is a taste of the text of the Pope’s latest video message “for the popular movements”: […]
Catholic social teaching
Commonweal writer slams the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops
Molly Wilson O’Reilly, a practicing Catholic, pulls very few punches in this piece at The Atlantic. The context, of course, is the bishops’ efforts to ban Joe Biden from communion for his views on abortion. Here is a taste: It […]
Why are some Catholics concerned about the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine?
Steven Millies of the Catholic Theological Union clears this up for us in a piece at The Conversation. Millies address the belief, popular among many pro-life groups, that the vaccines use fetal tissue from aborted babies: To be clear, none […]
Pope Francis’s scathing critique of American life
Yesterday at The New York Times, Pope Francis published an excerpt of his new book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. He offers a devastating critique of the selfishness that we Americans try to pass off as […]
What is happening at *Sojourners*?
Aysha Khan at Religion News Service is reporting that the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners has replaced Jim Wallis as editor in chief and “announced a new policy of editorial independence from the organization’s advocacy work.” Wallis founded Sojourners and is President […]
Catholic Archbishop of Washington D.C. Condemns Trump’s Visit to John Paul II Memorial Today
Today, in an attempt to shore-up his support among Roman Catholics, Donald Trump visited the John Paul II National Shrine in Washington D.C. America magazine has it covered here. Here is Washington D.C. Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory: I find it baffling and […]
Tampa Bay Catholics and Evangelicals Discuss Climate Change
I am happy to see these local conversations taking place. Here is the Tampa Bay Times: On the fifth anniversary of an historic papal document about the environment and as the coronavirus continues to imperil the world, a panel of Catholic […]
Is There a Catholic Case for Bernie Sanders?
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and managing editor of Zogby Research Services, thinks so. Here is a taste of his piece at the National Catholic Reporter: When we hear the “angry” Sanders speak about the gross inequalities […]
Is Trump Pro-Life?
John Gehring is Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life Action and the author of The Francis Effect: A Radical Pope’s Challenge to the American Catholic Church. Here is a taste of his Religion News Service piece “Trump Woos Catholics […]
Romano Guardini’s Response to Our Tech-Saturated World
Thanks to Robert Dean Lurie‘s recent piece at America, I am now aware of 20th-century Catholic theologian Romano Guardini and his book Letters From Lake Como. Here is a taste of Lurie’s piece: It is hard to deny that we live in […]
“Throwaway Culture”
I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Charles Camosy‘s new book Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can United a Fractured People. Camosy offers us a small glimpse of his argument in a […]
Wearing a MAGA Hat is Not Pro-Life
Rev. John Stowe is bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky. Covington Catholic School, the school at the center of last weekend’s incident at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., is not in the Lexington Diocese, but Stowe’s recent op-ed in […]
Should We Rethink Our Response to the Covington Catholic Boys?
I posted about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial between a Native American veteran and the MAGA-hat-wearing boys from Covington Catholic High School here. I wrote: Ironically, these boys were in Washington D.C. for the “Right to Life” march. Catholics […]
Someone Failed These Boys
If you haven’t seen it yet, here are students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky mocking and harassing Native American Vietnam War veteran Nathan Phillips. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRyUlbgWCP0&w=560&h=315] Some quick comments: Ironically, these boys were in Washington D.C. […]
Are Catholics the “Brains” of the Christian Right?
Check out Gene Zubovich’s piece at Aeon titled “Evangelicals bring the votes, Catholics bring the brains.” I think he is largely correct. When evangelicals mobilised politically in the 1970s and declared a ‘culture war’ against the menace of secularism, they […]
When Pro-Lifers “Held Sway” at a Socialist Magazine
In 1979, the progressive/democratic socialist magazine In These Times ran an anti-abortion essay. It was written by Elizabeth Moore, a Catholic right-to-life advocate, and Karen Mulhauser, a leader of NARAL. Yesterday, the current deputy editor of In This Times wrote that the magazine […]
The Catholic Church Criticizes the Prosperity Gospel
The Catholic Church is not a fan of the prosperity gospel movement. The authors of an article in Civilta Cattolica, a Vatican-approved publication, criticize the movement and even name names: Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Joel Osteen. Some of you […]
Michael Gerson’s Keeps Bringing the Fire
In his latest Washington Post column, Gerson continues to rail against the hypocrisy of pro-Trump evangelicals and the failure of evangelical politicians to display Christian leadership in the so-called age of Trump. But in this particular column, Gerson is particularly hard […]
Conservatives Debate Trump at Georgetown University
The Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life brought together an interesting cast of conservative characters recently to talk about Donald Trump. The panel included Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru, and court evangelical and self-acknowledged “modern […]
Making Sense of Israel in Christian Theology
We have been posting a lot lately about the way evangelicals and other Christians think about Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. As I try to sort all of this out myself, I found Gavin D’Costa‘s […]