Michael Sean Winters

Donald Trump's re-election gives his repulsive ideas the weight of popular endorsement, writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters. 

NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters is declaring victory in the presidential race for an unusual candidate, his St. Bernard, Damiana, in this parody column.

This will be the third election in which a few thousand votes in a few states will determine which of two wildly different governing approaches will be given power to enact themselves.

We don't know whom Americans will choose to lead the country in tomorrow's election. Half the U.S. will love the choice; the other half will hate it. How should we, as Catholics, help unite the country when it is done?

When U.S. bishops meet, their first objective must be unity, writes Michael Sean Winters. "It will require candor, synodality, and the selection of committee chairs who are good pastors," he writes.   

I always warn people to remember that a document like this pertains to the whole church, not just the church in the U.S.

The Democrats' easiest route to regain control of the House is through the upstate New York districts they lost two years ago, but the strong winds blowing through the presidential contest could impact races in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

Whatever Donald Trump says is always said as if doubting it entails great risk, to oneself and to one's country. It is "follow the leader" on a grandiose scale.

Vice President Kamala Harris' closing message is a case study in political malpractice, writes columnist Michael Sean Winters.

If Trump wins, these Senate contests will be critical to the preservation of democracy. But the Democrats simply are defending too many seats in too many places where Trump won in either 2016 or 2020.

"The synod is wrestling with how to permit pastoral differences between the churches while guaranteeing the pope's authority to maintain unity among the churches," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters.

In NCR's poll of Catholic voters in swing states, what was most striking to columnist Michael Sean Winters was what it revealed about issues that entail cultural and ecclesial ideas as well as political ones.

Three U.S. cardinals who met with Pope Francis aren't saying what was on the agenda. A likely topic, writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters, is the need to fill the many vacancies in U.S. metropolitan archdioceses.

The panel on "The Role and Authority of the Bishop in a Synodal Church" focused on moving away from monarchical episcopal authority. It was not Management 101. It was mission-oriented, grace-filled Ecclesiology 101.

Is today's Republican Party capable of exercising any check on Donald Trump? Which senator would have the courage to say no to a reelected Trump?

The protests, from the very start, have been directed at Israel. Michael Sean Winters asks: When obvious moral facts are ignored, can these anti-Israel protests be explained as anything but evidence of antisemitism?

It's time for another installment of Michael Sean Winters' long-running feature, Catholics Behaving Badly. This time, the regrettable examples come from the Denver Archdiocese and Raymond Arroyo's show on EWTN.

If you were grading this debate against that by the two presidential candidates, this one was more substantive to be sure.

As Pope Francis likes to say, reality is more important than ideas, so examining legitimate diversity among the churches will require a discussion of controversies that divide local churches.

Vice President Kamala Harris understands, and is getting better at communicating, the core Catholic teaching about economics: The economy is made for man, not man for the economy.