'END THE DEATH PENALTY' In a rare display of ecclesial unity, a cross-section of liberal and conservative Catholic publications pushed forward a singular message Thursday: It’s time for the United States to end the use of the death penalty.
'HAS AMERICA LOST ITS MORAL CENTER?' A five-person panel examined American life; speakers discussed a nationwide political crisis, the loneliness they've seen on the streets, and what can be regained.
'HUMANAE VITAE' AND THE SENSUS FIDELIUM On moral issues, the church must learn from the experiences of baptized people. Discernment strives to discern the true action of the Holy Spirit that involves the experience of people in their daily lives, but also many other aspects as well.
AGAINST THE CULTURE OF DEATH John Gehring interviews Karen Clifton, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, about why opposing the death penalty is a prolife cause.
DEMYTHOLOGIZE THE GUN Prayer alone isn’t enough. Justice requires action. The prophets are never satisfied with mere lip service to God. If mouths move and feet stay in the same place, hypocrisy reigns.
EXAMINING CONSCIENCE The language of conscience is not so much the language of a right, but of a duty always to act in conscience — that is, the obligation to find and to follow what we understand to be God’s will.
EXAMINING OUR SOCIAL SINS What does it mean to embrace honestly an examination of conscience at a time and in a world where racism, violence and environmental degradation are so present?
FEARFUL ASYMMETRY Just-war theory is a set of beliefs that reaches back at least as far as Augustine. Within this theory, jus ad bellum concerns the justice of going to war in the first place, while jus in bello concerns justice in the conduct of war.
HUMANAE VITAE AT 50 The maturing of church teaching. An in-depth look at the birth control teaching and its impact on generations of Catholics.
JUST WAR? ENOUGH ALREADY We should no longer damn nonviolence with faint praise by recognizing it only as a heroic witness for saints, or as a tactic we recommend to protesters only when we fear their desperation will turn violent and upset our comfortable lives.
HOLY DISOBEDIENCE Standing up against injustice can be the hardest thing you ever do, but no one ever said following God would be easy. Fear, rather than love, too often shapes our actions. 'The root of war,' Thomas Merton famously observed, 'is fear.'
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION ON GUNS Common-sense regulation of gun sales and ownership is an issue of life, and Catholics must fight against the culture of gun violence that pervades our nation.
NUCLEAR WAR AND CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY Thomas Merton’s essay on a Christian response to the prospect of nuclear war from 1962. 'Are the masses of the world, including you and me, to resign themselves to their fate and march on to global suicide without resistance'?
THE POPE, 'A JOURNALISM OF PEACE AGAINST FAKE NEWS' If responsibility is the answer to the spread of fake news, then a weighty responsibility rests on the shoulders of those whose job is to provide information, namely, journalists, the protectors of news.
THE ONES IGNORED On the surface, the Reproductive Health Act of 2019 brings New York law to par with Supreme Court rulings. But there are some significant differences.
IS JOHN PAUL II THE MODEL FOR ABORTION DEBATE? As the 2020 presidential campaign season begins to roll out and abortion remains singular in its ability to divide the electorate and swamp all other political issues, a bit of not-too-distant papal history may be instructive.
WHICH SIDE ARE WE ON? When one side proposes ways that human beings might begin to solve a deadly problem while the other side leaves it up to God, you know which side is right.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH EVIL? When the systems of “the world” are able to operate as denied and disguised evil, they soon become the “spirits in the air” that do immense damage but are invisible and unaccountable.
GENDER, SEX, AND OTHER NONSENSE It is not unfair to say that Catholic conversation about sex and gender has a problem. More accurately, it has a pair of problems: one concerns our ability to speak credibly to the non-Catholic public; the other concerns our ability to speak productively to one another.
ALL VACCINES ARE MORALLY ACCEPTABLE The Vatican has made clear that all the COVID-19 vaccines are morally acceptable. Let us pray that this deeply pro-life position will be proclaimed with one voice by our global church as we work together to protect life and advance the common good.
CAN CATHOLICS AGREE ON ANYTHING ABOUT ABORTION? Catholics of all political stripes can come together around supporting women and children. Our shared commitment to the principles of human dignity and the common good should help us bridge the divide...
VATICAN POVERTY CONFERENCE Francis condemned greed and the ruthless pursuit of profit in a message sent to a Vatican conference on poverty Sunday (Oct. 3), offering his spiritual take on economic issues to a group of economists and faith leaders...
MISOGYNY AND THE ABORTION DEBATE The violence of abortion severs a baby from the mother’s womb—quite literally. And yet so often the way we approach the issue of abortion also severs baby from the mother in another way: by focusing on one over the other.
THOU SHALT NOT SHARE FALSE WITNESS The great religious traditions do not stop at the simple Sunday-school warning against lying. They suggest that we have an affirmative moral obligation to be fact-checkers.
UKRAINE, THE VATICAN, AND VATICAN II The war in Ukraine presents challenges for the Church and forces self-examination among progressive Catholics, whose horizons may now be clouded.
WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO BE PRO-LIFE A moral world is one whose societies realize that none of us can manage alone without the help of those who believe that every life is as important as their own.
WHEN ABORTION ISN’T ABORTION Pro-life slogans are simple, but women’s needs aren’t. The practical, legal, and medical realities of abortion overlap in complicated ways.
CATHOLICS CELEBRATE OVERRULING OF ROE A monumental decision closely followed by Catholics and pro-life advocates, both bishops and pro-life organizations have issued statements in the wake of the decision.
IS THIS WHAT WE WANTED? Mollie O'Reilly and Natalia Imperatori-Lee highlight the complex realities of women’s reproductive health, discuss their experiences as mothers, and identify what a true “culture of life” might look like.
THE END OF ROE The U.S. bishops have "tied the institutional church to a political party hostile to the very policies that would help women and families raise children."
ABORTION AND POLITICAL LOVE The intensity of Catholic rhetoric surrounding abortion in recent months has brought into sharp focus the inadequacy and even the potential destructiveness of certain patterns of thinking within the pro-life movement
UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE LEARNED FROM EUROPE A fair and just society would be one in which abortion was never necessary for a woman’s survival or for her ability to care for her children. And the U.S. is shamefully inadequate in terms of affordable healthcare...
AMERICAN IDOLS The dysfunctional gun culture in the United States is just one example of how much work must still be done by Catholics who advocate for the dignity of all human life.
DOES CATHOLIC RHETORIC ABOUT SEX LINE UP WITH REALITY? At our best, we Catholics believe in the transcendence of sex, that it involves something so innately good and beautiful as to encounter the divine. Decades of doctrinal baggage can make it so that the joy of love doesn’t come easy.