Ross Douthat

NCR Connections: When you see opinion polls, you can't say that U.S. Catholics who are progressive have been "suppressed." But now one of the most public faces of Catholicism in this country will match those majorities.

NCR Connections: The Theology en la Plaza essay "Hate is not welcome aquí" is the plea of four writers that we look carefully and acknowledge the depth of what is occurring all around us.

A truly global media, EWTN has made strategic alliances in recent years, acquiring the National Catholic Register, which has become a vehicle for pronouncements and manifestos from church leaders on the right, and partnering with Sophia Institute Press, which regularly publishes books that aim to take down the current pope.

NCR Today: Both nonbelievers and defenders of orthodoxy — like these two New York Times columnists — have unexamined assumptions about the widening definition of "Christian."

I just couldn't continue to help prop up an institution that I've loved my whole life, but that's run by men who, after all this time, are dithering still in response to the devastation done by child abusers in collars.

Does encouraging a response of mercy toward those considered outside the law mean a renunciation of the law? A biblical encounter and its artistic depiction lend insight to this question.

Commentary: There are striking parallels between the ultramontanist thinkers and authors of the 19th century — the century of Vatican I — and those I would name the "new ultramontanists" of today.

Distinctly Catholic: Catholic conservatives are finally taking the clergy sex abuse crisis seriously. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been accused, and they are hijacking the crisis to attack Francis.