Michael Sean Winters

Michael Sean Winters is the author of Left At the Altar: How Democrats Lost The Catholics And How Catholics Can Save The Democrats (Basic Books, 2008). His biography of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, God's Right Hand: How Jerry Falwell Made God a Republican and Baptized the American Right was published by Harper One in January 2012 to critical acclaim. 

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Gas prices are seen Nov. 29 in Mount Rainier, Maryland. (CNS/Reuters/Leah Millis)

Inflation has the country on edge. Democrats need to find better ways to address it.

Michael Sean Winters: Inflation makes people nervous as each dollar stretches less and less far. President Biden and his team need to find better ways to address the issue, both in terms of policy and of communications.

Protesters demonstrate outside the New York City Department of Health offices after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Dec. 6, 2021, that all employers in the private sector must implement COVID-19 vaccine mandates for their workers in New York

Links: Trumpian propaganda; global inequality; Latino voters

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Justice Neil Gorsuch's dissent from decision to deny religious exemption; worldwide inequality is worse than we thought; university coaches are "robbing us blind"

The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in Washington is seen Nov. 13, 2020. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

Opposition to Black icon at Catholic University ignores Christ's universality

Michael Sean Winters: George Floyd, murdered so cruelly, so viciously — his sufferings are surely one with those of Christ on the cross. Mary is Floyd's mother as she is mother to us all. 

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone distributes Communion during a Mass for the homeless Nov. 6 at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption. (CNS photo/David Maung)

Links: Cordileone rescheduled; Newsom's gun proposal; GOP shenanigans in Georgia

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Archbishop asked to reschedule a parish visit due to vaccination policy; Insurrection report is beyond damning for Mark Meadows; bet on the good people of metro Atlanta.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the November jobs report from the White House Dec. 3 in Washington. He convoked a two-day virtual summit on promoting democracy Dec 9. (CNS/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Biden's summit on democracy and how Catholic teaching can help

Michael Sean Winters: President Joe Biden recently convoked a two-day virtual summit on promoting democracy. Today we are fighting for democracy at home, the fight is proving difficult, and Biden's Catholic faith has something to offer the cause.

A family is seen near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Nov. 18. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

Defend religiously affiliated child care without igniting a culture war

Issues like federal aid to child care need not become fodder in the culture wars that corrode our politics and our faith. We have to find workable compromises to these kinds of policy disputes, not simply go on beating each other up over them.

James Kendall plays the organ during an "Advent Lessons and Carols" service on the first Sunday of Advent Nov. 28 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Lindenhurst, New York. (CNS/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Links: Tycoons' tax evasion, the 'smiling pope' and more Advent music

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: How the wealthy avoid paying taxes; Supreme Court looking into parents using school vouchers; music played on the heavenly pipe organ

Refugees stand outside their shelters as Pope Francis visits the government-run Reception and Identification Center Dec. 5 in Mytilene, Greece. (CNS/Vatican Media)

Pope Francis evangelizes very differently than US conservatives

Michael Sean Winters: Pope Francis held up St. Paul's speech to the Athenians as a model of evangelization, saying "he did not impose; he proposed." This is the pedagogy of accompaniment, which can scarcely be labeled "heretical" or "confusing" as some conservatives are wont to do.

Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry and U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke distribute Communion during Mass July 9 at the National Blue Army Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Asbury, New Jersey. (CNS/World Apostolate of Fatima, USA)

Links: Cardinal Burke to celebrate Mass, Democrats need to talk economics, the New Right of American politics

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Cardinal Burke to celebrate a "More Ancient Usage" Mass; Bidens attend Kennedy Center Honors; look inside Liz Shuler's first 100 days as AFL-CIO president

Migrants near Huixtla, Mexico, join a caravan heading to the U.S. border Nov. 27. (CNS/Reuters/Jose Luis Gonzalez)

Migrants were asked, 'Why did you leave your home?' Here's what they said.

Hope Border Institute has issued a new report on the root causes of migration. Interviewees in Central America say extortion, poverty, unemployment and worsening conditions as a result of COVID-19 are among the reasons they had no other option but to leave home. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, is seen in Beverly Hills April 30, 2018. (CNS/Reuters/Mike Blake)

Bigotry and cowardice in the GOP

Michael Sean Winters: House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has so far refused to discipline Rep. Lauren Boebert for her anti-Muslim bigotry. It seems that the politics of paranoia invites cowardice on the part of leaders whose job it is to stigmatize aberrant behavior, not cower before it.

President Joe Biden arrives at the White House in Washington Aug. 12 to discuss his Build Back Better agenda. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

Links: Gerrymandering in Wisconsin, the Black Madonna at CUA, and Build Back Better health provisions

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Newly gerrymandered state legislatures; Dr. Oz running for Senate; health care provisions in the Build Back Better bill.

President George W. Bush signs a bill that extends the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, surrounded by lawmakers and other supporters of the program at the White House in Washington July 30, 2008. (CNS/Reuters/Larry Downing)

On World AIDS Day, what that pandemic teaches us about COVID-19

Michael Sean Winters: Two decades ago, the U.S. took the lead in bringing AIDS treatments to poorer countries. Do we have the compassion and the courage to mount such an effort again — or even put our own house in order?

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles swings a censer as he concelebrates Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Nov. 15, 2021, in Baltimore during the bishops' fall general assembly. (CNS/Bob Roller)

Links: Republicans control state legislatures; Archbishop Gomez earns some praise

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Some threats to democracy are less violent than others, but just as damaging; Trump-endorsed candidates quit, tread water; U.S. bishops compliment José Gomez.

Pro-life advocates and supporters of legal abortion are seen near the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on Oct. 4. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

As Supreme Court considers abortion case, can we assume the best about our opponents?

Michael Sean Winters: The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a case that could ultimately end the nationwide right to abortion. In the days and weeks ahead, it is my fervent prayer that we can all try and be as sympathetic as possible with those who disagree with us on the issue.

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, concelebrates Mass with Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore Nov. 15 in Baltimore. (CNS/Bob Roller)

Links: An editorial on the bishops' Communion document, labor news, hymns for CELAM and Thanksgiving

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: National Catholic Register insists bishops' Communion document is "teaching document"; Catholic Labor Network hosts panel on economic justice; technology has elevated the art of gerrymandering

William of Orange and his wife, Mary, are presented with the English crown in 1688, as depicted in a 1790 engraving. (Wikimedia Commons/Wellcome Collection)

Breidenbach's fertile research raises questions about history of religious liberty

Michael Sean Winters: Part 2 of a review of Our Dear-Bought Liberty by Michael Breidenbach. Does his theory about Catholic ideas and experience informing the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution work?

A demonstrator in New York City holds a placard during a protest Nov. 19 after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted by a jury that day in the shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of another in 2020. (CNS/Reuters/David Dee Dellgado)

Links: The Rittenhouse verdict; Catholic Worker reaction to Archbishop Gomez; Bosnia on the verge of breakup

Links: Lawyers for Kyle Rittenhouse argued their client acted in self-defense when he shot and killed two people and wounded another two days after a white police officer shot and killed a Black man. It's appalling the hateful Fox News troika lionized the defendant.

"Baltimore in 1752," an 1817 illustration by artist John Moale and etcher William Strickland (The New York Public Library)

Ave Maria professor's book sees roots of religious liberty in Catholicism

Michael Sean Winters: Part 1 of a review of Our Dear-Bought Liberty by Michael Breidenbach, who argues that Catholic experience and thought laid groundwork for the U.S. constitutional separation of church and state.

Bishop Michael Burbidge, Archbishop José Gomez , president of the U.S. bishops' conference, and Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens attend a Nov. 16 news conference during the bishops' fall assembly in Baltimore. At the podium is Chieko Noguchi. (CNS)

US bishops lost about how to engage a culture they don't understand

Michael Sean Winters: The U.S. bishops do not know how to embrace, still less to influence or evangelize, the culture of today.

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