NCR Editorial Staff

Our tradition, from the heart of the gospel to the deeply established Catholic social justice tradition it inspired, cries out for religious resistance to the Trump project. Any hint of complicity with it is a betrayal of that tradition.

No Supreme Court decision can substitute for the choice that we have to make. In one instance, church rules and teaching are paramount. In the other, no child will be turned away.

As Catholic voters consider how to cast their ballots in November, the issues that have the greatest claim on our attention can be discerned from NCR's headlines since the 2024 election swept Trump back into power.

Bankruptcy is not enough to "move beyond" the Catholic Church's sex abuse crisis. The clerical/hierarchical culture has yet to square up with the reality of bishops' betrayal of the community at a sacramental level.

Some quiet contemplation in our ever-noisy world seems essential to continue processing the attacks and their aftermath, but also as a starting point to consider how we can advocate for peace.

Last year alone the Sunshine State executed 19 death row inmates, and this year the number is already at 12, with three more to go. This trend alarms Florida's bishops and it should stir the consciences of all Catholics.

With a U.S. cardinal declaring recently that "war is always evil," we are witnessing a pivotal moment in Catholic response to the activities of the most militant and powerful nation on earth.

Catholics need to speak up for press freedom. As Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray put it in 1963: "The freedom of the press to inform is nothing really but the other side of the rights of the people to be informed."

The leaders of the Society of St. Pius X made decisions that carry major implications. Their actions will need to be unpacked, and in some cases, undone, if the group seeks to have unity with the Catholic Church.

The question we need to pose this July Fourth, one that previous generations of Americans have had to pose and answer, is this: What are we celebrating?

"Magnifica Humanitas is ultimately asking for one very simple, yet very difficult result: conversion. And Leo is not directing his message only to tech giants, think tanks or legislatures. He wants conversion from us."

In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV has spoken about war, peace, technology and human dignity with the clarity this moment demands. Catholics should now ask what it means to say that just war theory is "outdated."

The event was another step by religious and political extremists intent on destroying the wall that separates church and state as well as the constitutional guarantees of freedom of – and from — religion.

The Catholic Church is not a static entity fully and perfectly formed, but our hope is that it doesn't take another 500 years to acknowledge the realities of the LGBTQ+ community.

On the holiest day of Christianity, the U.S. president threatened to annihilate a civilization. That is corporate evil.

No straight path exists to sort the way through Catholic-Jewish tensions when Israel's resort to violence raises objections in many quarters. Yet we can show the world examples of love that overcome fear and division.

We have gone to war on the bluster and wish of a president for whom reality and facts are transactions amenable to his needs of a given moment.

We should not be surprised if Catholics are asked to pay a price for what their leaders are compelled to do in service of the Gospel. Sometimes the Gospel requires that we bear a burden.

We are encouraged by the bishops who have spoken out against the Trump administration's assault on human dignity. But to those bishops who have remained silent, we ask one simple question: What are you waiting for?
 

It is a new level of opposition for American cardinals to formally question the fundamental morality of an administration's engagement with the world.