Michael Sean Winters

"I do not see how the country can dig itself out of the many holes it is in without a strong labor movement," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters.

"Our wonderful pope seems to me to bring the best of our tradition, and the insights of his immediate predecessors, to the Catholics of today, and to make that tradition fresh again," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters.

"I understand that in a small parish church the only realistic place for a tabernacle may be behind the main altar. But in a cathedral?" NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters writes.

Michael Sean Winters surveys the landscape in the contests for control of the Senate.

In the midterm, will there be a blue wave that carries the Democrats into the majority in the House and, less likely, the Senate? Michael Sean Winters says that question has morphed into: How big will the blue wave be?

A documentary video about this year's The Way Forward gathering, held at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, easily serves to spark conversation about proclaiming the Gospel in a digital age in various ecclesial settings.

"The demand for ideological conformity to extreme views combined with the structural impediment caused by gerrymandered districts results in a party that has lost the art of persuasion," writes Michael Sean Winters.

The Democratic Party fails "to convince the public that a particular policy would address their problems" and "appears out of touch and devoid of vision," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters.

Michigan's Democratic Senate candidate needs to explain how he intends to achieve his goals, writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters. 

"The Roman Curia for centuries has been all male, all white, all Italian and all clerical," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters. "Not anymore and not ever again."

The contest pits four-term Rep. Haley Stevens, who positions herself as a moderate who gets things done, against Abdul El-Sayed, running as a progressive intent on shaking up the political system.

"Populism usually has an angry edge to it, and Catholicism always favors a more irenic approach," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters. 

Even when ideology is not at stake, the church lives in history, even while its foundations and its eschatological future transcend history, writes Michael Sean Winters.

On both sides of the Atlantic, people are fighting back to stop huge, powerful corporations from having their way with the things we should all share, writes Michael Sean Winters.

The Washington Post compiled a list of the 25 most influential works of culture in U.S. history. Perusing the list, you would have no idea that religion has been a consistently important cultural force in the U.S.

It is difficult to see how we bind the nation's wounds without some kind of shared national mythos and telos, writes NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters.

Their distress at the Democratic Party's failure for two generations to defend the interests of the working class is admirable, but it is not clear whether they will only further polarize the country. 

We learned more about how Pope Leo XIV intends to implement the reforms his predecessor introduced when the Vatican released a "thematic framework" for a meeting to discuss Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia.

There is room for everybody within the church's embrace. Except those who refuse the embrace. It appears the Vatican has finally lost patience with these antisemitic, post-liberal, cafeteria and now former Catholics.

In 1776, we declared ourselves free of allegiance to Great Britain. We did not leave behind the human race with its capacity for sin as well as greatness, generosity as well as moral blindness.