Thomas Reese

Signs of the Times: The young people coming to Rome are from this pool of loyal young Catholics, who have been chosen by their national bishops' conferences, religious communities and seminaries to meet with the pope. 

Washington -- Tuesday I am planning to get arrested on Capitol Hill at the National Catholic Day of Action with Dreamers. My arrest will be an expression of solidarity with “Dreamers” who face arrest and deportation if Congress or the president does not do something to protect their legal status.

Signs of the Times: The Vatican's job is to make martyrdom unnecessary wherever possible. This is why negotiations are conducted by diplomats, not saints or martyrs.

The Catholic Church needs to learn about married life from the faithful, said Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich. He is saying this from theological conviction, not a desire to water down church teaching.

A Catholic priest should not have a woman in his bedroom at night, but Fr. Tom Reese says he has become quite dependent on Alexa.

Column: He may be on the side of other marginalized peoples, but the overwhelming consensus in the media is that Pope Francis has a blind spot when it comes to sexual abuse.

“Nobody died” is a headline you will rarely see, but as far as I can find out, no one died of hypothermia during the recent cold emergency in the nation's capital.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced that its Office of Civil Rights now has a division whose job is to protect the conscience rights of healthcare workers and hospitals.

The beginning of the calendar year is a time for making resolutions, but in the Catholic liturgical year it is called "Ordinary Time" — a boring title for the part of the year that's not Advent, Christmas, Lent or Easter.

I feel guilty that I have not written a column on "Dreamers," those children who were brought illegally into the United States by their parents. The reason I find it difficult to write such a column is that for me the whole idea of deporting Dreamers is so mean and unjust that I find it incomprehensible that anyone would want to do it.

Conservative Catholic dissidents, who have been attacking Pope Francis, showed their true colors recently by attacking retired Pope Benedict, calling his writings "subversive" and "modernist." That's right, they think Benedict is a heretic.

Beginning his priestly life as a journalist, Bernard Law rose quickly up the ecclesiastical ladder only to come crashing down in scandal and disgrace.

Anyone committed to the protection of children should carefully study the report by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. But not the recommendations to the Catholic Church on celibacy and sacramental confession.

Commentary: I never thought that anyone could be more stupid than the U.S. Catholic bishops in dealing with sexual abuse of minors, but the Republican Party has done it.

Why would a religious person get involved in lobbying on tax policy? Tax policy is not just a political issue; it is also a moral issue.

It is hard to be both a diplomat and a prophet, but Pope Francis pulls it off better than anyone else.

In Myanmar, Pope Francis risks either compromising his moral authority or putting in danger the Christians of that country. I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip.

In an address at Georgetown University, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego criticized both extremes in the fight over religious freedom and called for public consensus based on solidarity.

The head of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ anti-racism task force told his colleagues that racism “lives in a particular and pernicious way” in the United States.

Signs of the Times: Yesterday's papal loyalists are today's dissidents. Yesterday's dissenters are today's papal defenders. The true scandal in the church is not what one theologian or pope says, it is that we are not capable of dialoguing with each other.