Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: The U.S. bishops' own sensum fidelium; approaches to synodality in Australia and Germany; Abbott vs. O'Rourke; Trump vs. DeSantis; beauty from Bach.
Distinctly Catholic: We Catholics admit there is a hierarchy of values and the protection of human life is at the top of that hierarchy, especially when the arguments opposite are principally about economics.
Aboard his Sept. 4 flight from Rome to Mozambique, the pope was presented with a new book by French journalist Nicolas Senèze that details U.S. conservatives' efforts to influence his decision-making.
Distinctly Catholic: Populist blowhards like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may have focused the outrage of the hoi polloi, but it was the elites themselves who made the sense of grievance plausible.
The Herald is the newest player in a web of connections between conservative Catholic media and wealthy donors, right-wing activists, high-ranking clergy and libertarian political players.
Distinctly Catholic: You could have a field day comparing what George Weigel wrote about national bishops' conferences during John Paul II's pontificate to what he writes now.
Distinctly Catholic: Why does George conclude that it is sex that is the "poison in the bloodstream of the Church" and not the sin of pride of the bishops who covered it up?
Distinctly Catholic: George Weigel's latest disputes Cardinal Parolin's calling Amoris Laetitia a paradigm shift. But there's a purpose to Weigel's framing the term so narrowly.
