The instant outrage the tableau aroused — right or wrong — tells a larger story about something that has happened in Catholic life across the last four decades. But it has not been the only recent indicator.

In a January report on religious liberty the U.S. bishops told us somewhat alarmingly of their concern that "the very lives of people of faith" are threatened in the United States.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan inveighed in June against New York's proposed Nonpublic Dignity for All Students Act with complaints about "bullying" Catholics and forcing Catholics to "toe the line on "gender ideology."

One of the first attacks leveled at Kamala Harris once she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president was that she "hates what [Catholics] believe."

We Catholics have come to prize a little too much being outsiders set against the culture and the world. Quite often, Catholics seem crouched defensively as though the church were under constant attack.

That's not a coincidence. For several decades, Catholics in the U.S. have been taught to see the world as a hostile place set against us, and to think of ourselves as a "sign of contradiction" set against that world.

This point of view has been nurtured within the church for two generations. Forty years can make it seem like Catholics always have seen our relationship with the world this way. We have not. And, in fact, that idea does not reflect our tradition very well.

The world as a partner

No matter how the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council called the church to turn toward and embrace the world — indeed, no matter how St. Augustine reminded us that our faith "does not repeal or abolish" the laws and norms of the world in which we make our earthly pilgrimage — we Catholics insist more and more on what historian Leslie Woodcock Tentler has called "Catholic difference."

We have come to be intoxicated by being different, standing apart, and the idea that the world is out to get Catholics.

It was not always this way. Vatican II itself proved that while the world is not the same as the Church, the Church can and must see the world as a partner.

The world is the field of salvation given to the church (Matthew 13:38).

A sign of contradiction

A temptation to stand apart from the world has always dogged the Church. The last 40 years have seen Catholics succumb thoroughly to that temptation, desiring to be a "sign of contradiction."

That phrasing — "sign of contradiction" — deserves particular attention. We find it in the Gospel of Luke (2:34) and in the Acts of the Apostles (28:22).

But the phrase came into its recent popularity during the John Paul II papacy. He used the phrase as early as a 1979 Angelus message, three months after his election.

But Pope John Paul began to speak of Catholics as a sign of contradiction to the world with considerable frequency after 1987.

A quick search of the Vatican website discloses 45 uses of the phrase "sign of contradiction" during the John Paul II papacy, 39 of which came in 1987 or later.

The Seventh General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops which took place in October 1987 may well have been the turning point that gave so much life to that oppositional, "sign of contradiction" narrative that we live with even today.

Addressing "the vocation and mission of the lay faithful in the church and the world," the synod took up the most neuralgic questions that had dogged the church since Vatican II.

They included the role of women and the participation of laypeople more generally in church leadership.

In 1987, NCR described that synod as the "first clear test of strength between papal loyalists and post-Vatican II church leaders" — we might say, between those who preferred to restrain the Council's reforms and those who intended to press them forward.

Looking back, it seems clear that those who preferred to restrain the Council prevailed, and something shifted in the church after the 1987 synod.

The influence of leaders like Milwaukee's Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Chicago's Cardinal Joseph Bernardin waned.

Others like Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law and New York's Cardinal John O'Connor ascended, and the overall trajectory of the U.S. bishops has traced the path of their influence since 1987.

It seems inescapable that under Pope John Paul the church began to embrace its identity as a "sign of contradiction," a church in opposition to the world. Read more

• Steven P. Millies is professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

It marks the end of a generation of Catholics in politics, those who arrived on the national political scene in the wake of World War II and the GI Bill of the Kennedys and Vatican II.

They were finally able to leave behind the marginalisation of the "papists" from the mainstream, where American Protestantism and the liberal establishment dominated, making the idea of a Catholic in the White House uncomfortable, to say the least.

Thanks to the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Biden, there are no longer suspicions about Catholics' loyalties.

But questions about the real content of liberal democracy today have ecumenically spread beyond the confines of Catholicism.

The end of an era

It's the end of an era that had begun some time ago and is now coming to pass.

The most evident change is that America is no longer, such as during the time of Kennedy, a "three-religion country" of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

Catholics hold 29 percent of the seats in the 117th Congress, but it's not necessarily a growing influence. It's more than the disappearance, in the last two decades, of pro-life Catholic politicians among the Democrats.

The focus on "social justice" has often swallowed up the rest of the Catholic imagination on the political and ecclesial left, and this has given space to a deep-seated revanchism from fellow Catholics on the right.

The fact that there is a majority of Catholic justices on the US Supreme Court today has not exactly benefited the credentials for the democratic culture of Catholicism in America.

Parallels have been drawn, both in America and at the Vatican, between Biden's decision and the late Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in 2013.

Besides the differences, especially in the freedom with which that decision was taken, there is the fact that, unlike Benedict XVI, Biden leaves no epigones, much less a Catholic movement behind him.

There are Catholics among the younger generations of Democrats in politics, but their Catholicism plays a more marginal role in their personal identity and political values.

The rift and the void

The void that Biden leaves behind is bigger than the rift with the majority of Catholic bishops on the issue of abortion as well as gender, and that made many of them quietly or openly favor Trump in the previous election.

Some bishops became even quieter - actually silent - when the former president and his cabal tried to overturn the results of the elections between November 2020 and January 2021.

That rift between Biden and the bishops on the admission to Communion for Catholics in public office who support legislation permitting abortion, euthanasia, or other moral evils did not become formal-sacramental.

That was thanks in part to the extraordinary intervention of the Vatican in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in May 2021.

However, it has never truly healed.

New era

Biden's exit marks a change in internal relations within US. Catholicism.

It is not simply the disappearance of conciliar Catholicism in favor of anti-conciliar Catholicism in a neo-conservative or traditionalist fashion.

The National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis (July 17-21 quite different from the previous one, in Minneapolis in 1941) has shown how the triad doctrine-life-worship of US Catholicism is a complex mixture.

It involves: forgetfulness (sometimes outright rejection) of Vatican II but also an anonymous reception of it; Catholic pride but also embrace of styles of worship that have a lot in common with American Protestant revivalism; quest for interior peace but also drive for emotional entertainment shareable on social media.

The push to include ecclesial identities other than the Irish and continental European ones, which have dominated for a century and a half, now finds support.

That support is not only in theological progressivism descending from the Enlightenment but also in the globalised traditionalism of the ethno-culturalist brand.

Certainly, an illiberal traditionalism is very active and well-funded in the United States, both at the theological and political level.

But the situation is more complicated and must be seen honestly in the context of the crisis of progressive Catholicism, the "spirit of Vatican II" Catholics, even in Europe.

This recent phase of identity-driven secularisation has created a void that was filled by intellectual, ecclesial, and ecclesiastical forces that cater to the post-modern self with ready-made answers (simplified as much as you want).

They appeal to the younger generations more directly than the ones projected by academic and collegiate Catholicism (to which I belong as a member of the professoriate).

A Catholic like J.D. Vance, Trump's choice for vice president, exemplifies a generation of post-liberal, anti-"woke" political-intellectual operatives who constantly shift ideologies in an attempt to define family, community, and polity — without paying much attention to Catholic social thought.

Biden's departure is certainly the end of an era but for reasons beyond the lack of a generation of Catholic politicians on the left.

It's a discontinuity that has to do with the interruption in the transmission of Vatican II Catholicism, in its comprehensive "catholicity," in many quarters of the Church in the United States, especially in the seminaries for the formation of the clergy.

Indeed, US militant and conservative Catholicism has largely cut its ties with the theology of Vatican II, but this is not just an American problem.

What is happening in the United States could be a good opportunity to look also into the Catholic Church in Europe, which is largely in denial.

What is happening in American politics with the retirement of a "Vatican II Catholic" like Joe Biden and the emergence of a politically expedient "cultural Catholicism" is also happening in Italian politics, for example.

As seen from the Vatican

The new configuration of the American electoral campaign opens two fronts of uncertainty for the Vatican.

With Biden's exit, Pope Francis loses a predictable interlocutor on internal issues and a reliable one on international issues (despite the differences in opinions and policies about Ukraine and Israel).

The post-Biden Democratic Party will be more distant from Rome and Europe: today's America is no longer an extension of the old continent, the last province of the Roman Empire of the neo-conservative dreams.

The relationship between a Trump-Vance administration and the Vatican (migration and environmental policies, Ukraine, Israel, China) is anyone's guess.

But it also opens an internal front within the Church, with the Vatican grappling with two different and opposing radicalisms (in different ways) on the abortion issue and on gender.

Culture war

If Kamala Harris were to be dragged into culture war fights, this might influence her relations with the Catholic Church both domestically and internationally and deteriorate the alignment with the Vatican that Biden was able to create and keep.

Some US bishops probably felt orphaned by the new GOP that, in its platform for the 2024 elections, demoted the abortion issue: the 2022 "Dobbs" ruling of the Supreme Court transformed the pro-life cause into an electoral liability in many districts.

But if Harris campaigns as a culture warrior, it is predictable that even more bishops will return to placing their hopes in the Republican Party, which has become a risk to the survival of constitutional democracy in America.

If Trump is elected, J.D. Vance could become the highest-ranking Catholic in a post-democratic or authoritarian United States.

One of the paradoxes of this American moment is that it was a Catholic president, Joe Biden, who in 2020-2021 helped save American democracy, which, at least until Kennedy and Vatican II, Catholics were accused of not believing in.

Now, the relationship between the political cultures of US Catholicism and American democracy enters a new territory.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

After graduating from the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which trains Vatican diplomats, in 1977, he began his service in the Holy See's diplomatic mission in New Zealand.

In subsequent postings in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Brazil — where, he said, he learned a lot about liberation theology.

He was then in Geneva, Switzerland, as the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations. Pope John Paul II then appointed him as apostolic nuncio to Haiti in 1995 and subsequently to Uganda in 1999.

On March 22, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI appointed then-Archbishop Pierre as nuncio to Mexico.

He arrived in Mexico as the milestone Fifth Conference of CELAM (the Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean) in Aparecida, Brazil, ended.

Archbishop Pierre was welcomed by Bishop Carlos Aguiar Retes, now cardinal-archbishop of Mexico City and one of the president-delegates of the Synod on Synodality.

"I still remember when I arrived at the airport, we talked about Aparecida because he had just arrived back from there the day before.

"I was interested because I had good knowledge of South America. I was there at the time of liberation theology, and many things had happened from the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, to my arrival in Mexico."

The Aparecida conference, he said, was "a kind of synodal process of the South American bishops."

"This is the only continent that has made such a synodal process," Cardinal Pierre said.

"The bishops developed a kind of dynamic of working together and looking for solutions together, to evangelise better, which is what the synod [on synodality] is all about.

"Nothing else: Better evangelisation. And they accompanied the people in their suffering, in their difficulties, and in their challenges."

At Aparecida, the bishops decided to write a document to address "the difficulty to transmit the faith from one generation to the next" in a new cultural context.

Then-Cardinal Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, was elected president of the writing commission by a vote of 112 out of 130.

"When I arrived in Mexico in 2007, I read the document of Aparecida," Cardinal Pierre recalled.

"It was six years before the election of Pope Francis. I read it, and I said, ‘My God, this is new! The bishops finally have developed a pastoral plan which is the result of their synodal approach.'"

"The fruit of Aparecida is a new pastoral approach," he said. "I saw it working in Mexico. It changes the church."

The U.S. bishops and Aparecida

When he arrived in the United States, nine years later, in 2016, Cardinal Pierre said, "I was astounded that many of the bishops didn't know what had happened in Aparecida.

"They did not know that ‘Evangelii Gaudium,' the first document of Pope Francis, was rooted in Aparecida."

"They had not seen what had happened in their own continent, in South America," he remarked.

"This is very serious, because what has happened was not banal. It was the beginning of what we live today.

"They didn't know that the pope was one of the bishops at Aparecida, or that the whole South American church had made a tremendous effort of synodality."

At Aparecida, the cardinal said, "the bishops said the church and society have changed, and the transmission of the faith is not done through the culture as in the past, so we have to provide new opportunities and ways for people to have a personal encounter with Christ through a church that is fitting to the new society, a new way of being Catholic.

"This demands a readjustment of the pastoral approach, which is very difficult to do because people are, we all are, set in our views, in our ways of preaching and organising."

"This is especially true in the United States, where we have a very organised church, which has worked beautifully for many years," Cardinal Pierre said.

"Over 200 years, we have built fantastic church schools, hospitals, parishes, and churches. But almost nobody comes [to church] anymore… so Pope Francis said, ‘Go out of the church.' But we still remain in the church. Why?"

"Pope Francis said, ‘I want a missionary church. I want a church of the poor that goes out to the poor.'"

But, the cardinal recalled, when he arrived in the United States as nuncio in 2016 he was "shocked" to hear some in the church laugh at that and dismiss it as "Bergoglio's idea."

He insisted: "The reality is that behind the vision of the pope there is Aparecida. Bergoglio is not the inventor of that approach. The Holy Spirit inspired this synodal approach at Aparecida."

"Six years later, Bergoglio was elected pope by the grace of the Holy Spirit," he said. "That's my faith. And the new pope followed in the footsteps of Aparecida."

Has he seen change in the U.S. church?

I asked the cardinal if he has seen significant change in the U.S. church since he arrived in 2016.

"I'm not sure," he responded.

"I see significant change in society. The phenomenon which was analysed by Aparecida is real for the church [in the States also] in the sense of the difficulty to transmit the faith.

"While people are aware of that, I am not sure that the consciousness of it is very strong."

He recalled that Pope Francis has called this a major challenge for the church today and said: "We have to respond to it. We cannot just go to sleep and keep saying that we have structures, because the question is: Do they work?"

He contrasted the earlier phase of evangelisation in the United States with the challenge the church faces in the 21st century:

Evangelisation was the beginning of the story of the church in America. Catholics were marginalised, but they made their way fighting to achieve the American dream and proposing their faith.

The Irish immigrants, for example, arrived with teachers, sisters, priests, and produced vocations. You had a phenomenal investment in education, in health care and so on, with battalions of sisters like nowhere else in the world.

"The transmission of the faith in the United States worked through a kind of coherence between the organisation of the church and the society…. But the sisters have disappeared.

"You once had vocations and seminaries in 200 places, but the seminaries are now empty. So the church faces new questions and challenges today, and one of them comes from the Hispanic migration.

Hispanic migration, a challenge for evangelisation

Many of the Hispanic immigrants arriving to the United States today are Catholic, the cardinal pointed out.

But, "unlike the Irish immigrants of earlier times, Hispanic Catholics don't come with their priests. They arrive like the poor.

"They knock on the door and they are rejected because America today is not an America that receives people, because there a crisis here."

He thinks this is "also a crisis of identity: Who are we? Are we still the country of immigrants that can give immigrants a hope to achieve the American dream?"

The church in the United States is faced with the question of evangelising Hispanic migrants, he said.

"A lot is being done," he admitted.

"The church provides Mass for them, but then what? Do we as church help them to make a transition, say, from being Catholic in Mexico to being Catholic in the United States?

"I spent 20 years in South America, and I saw that the way of being Catholic for a Mexican is quite different from the way of being Catholic for an Irish person in New York," he said.

"The feel is different."

He views the question of evangelisation as a much deeper one than just providing Mass, and said he applauds the effort being made by the Encuentro, a multiyear process of consultation and community building spearheaded by the Hispanic church in the United States.

The U.S. bishops and the pope

When I asked how he read the apparent disconnect between many U.S. bishops and Pope Francis, the cardinal remarked, "This is something we have to dig a little deeper [to understand]."

But, he said, "I would not concentrate on Francis so much because Francis is now seen as the big sinner by some.

"There are some priests and religious and bishops who are terribly against Francis as if he was the scapegoat [for] all the failures of the church or of society."

"We are in the church at a change of epoch," Cardinal Pierre said.

"People don't understand it. And this may be the reason why most of the young priests today dream about wearing the cassock and celebrating Mass in the traditional [pre-Vatican II] way."

"In some ways, they are lost in a society which has no security, and all of us when we feel lost look for some security," he said.

"But which kind of security?"

The cardinal recalled that Pope Francis declared, "my security is Jesus." He added, "It's not the church that will protect me. It's not the habit." Read more

• Gerard O'Connell is America's Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History.

Dozens of bishops, several in historically significant archdioceses, will be required by canon law to submit resignation letters upon turning 75.

At least 13 archdioceses and 21 dioceses could have new episcopal appointments by February 2025.

In addition, two dioceses — Fairbanks, Alaska, and Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana — operate without bishops.

The number of episcopal openings could increase because of deaths or resignations.

If he names new bishops to all those local churches, Francis will have appointed 64 percent of the U.S. episcopate since becoming pope in March 2013.

Forty-six percent of current U.S. bishops are Francis appointees, said Catherine Hoegeman, a Missouri State University sociology professor who tracks U.S. episcopal appointments.

"Over the next two years, it looks like Francis is going from [having appointed] a little less than half of active bishops to a little less than two-thirds. I think that's a notable shift," said Hoegeman.

Since 1969, she said, popes have made an average of 15 episcopal appointments every year in the United States.

She also told NCR that the likely openings in the next two years represent an unusually high potential turnover among archbishops.

"Out of 34 total retirements in the next couple of years, a third of them are going to be in the archdioceses. That seems to be a little skewed with a higher percentage of archdiocesan retirements," Hoegeman said.

By February 2025, the archbishops of New York, Hartford, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Omaha, Houston, Mobile and New Orleans will have turned 75.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington turned 75 in December 2022.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston turns 79, four years beyond the traditional retirement age, in June.

Meanwhile, seven sitting bishops have already turned 75 and another 14 will hit the retirement age over the next two years in dioceses across the country — from Honolulu and Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Palm Beach, Florida and Portland, Maine.

Although Catholic bishops must send resignation letters to the pope upon reaching age 75, Francis can decide to let a bishop remain in position up to age 80.

Whether all the potential new bishop appointments translate into a U.S. Catholic hierarchy that more closely reflects Francis' priorities is unknown.

Church historians and other scholars told NCR that the "talent pool" of potential bishops was primarily formed in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both of whom inspired conservative-leaning men to enter seminaries with visions of fighting "the culture of death" and the "dictatorship of relativism."

"To have great bishops, you need great seminaries.

"You need vibrant engagement with the intellectual life of the church, and I just don't see that happening," said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chair of religious studies at Manhattan College in the Bronx, New York.

Imperatori-Lee told NCR that she believes the pope will have a difficult time finding enough "Francis-type bishops" in the United States to change the church's path from an institution engaged in the culture wars to one that more faithfully models Francis' "culture of encounter."

"I am hopeful the men who Francis appoints will be in the style that he has done, men who are pastors first, and bureaucrats second, who are not careerist climbers," she said.

"But I don't know that the pool of potential bishops and cardinals is of the caliber where we would really get revolutionary change in the U.S. hierarchy."

No 'perfect' bishop candidates

In an interview with NCR, retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, who as a former member of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops helped advise the pope on which priests to select as bishops, described the process by which those candidates are identified and chosen.

In the United States, Rigali said that every few years bishops in different regions of the country meet to discuss potential bishop candidates, and send their names to the Vatican's nunciature, or embassy, in the U.S.

From there, the ambassador, known as an apostolic nuncio, seeks information from priests, deacons and lay people who know the candidates.

He said when he served at the Congregation for Bishops — now the Dicastery for Bishops — the office would present the pope with a list of three names for a diocese, sometimes with the congregation's recommendation for a particular candidate.

Rigali, a former archbishop of St Louis and Philadelphia, said no candidates are "perfect in every category," but that they reflect the sitting pope's priorities for a bishop.

"There's definitely a common thread; the life of the church in a particular time, and what is deemed appropriate and necessary in the choice of a pastor," Rigali said.

"Like anything else, there are going to be some differences of opinion, but we go by what the church teaches and what the Second Vatican Council says about bishops."

Continue reading

Thus, Catholic teaching about conflict condemns direct attacks on civilians or even the disproportionate killing of civilians as collateral damage in an attack on a military target.

In other words, you cannot blow up a 10-story apartment building to kill a terrorist.

The same is true of politics. You may have very good goals, but you also must look at the political muscle employed in attaining those goals and ask if the end justifies the means.

You need to ask, for example, what is the collateral damage caused by the tactics you use in gaining your objective.

The bishops waged a long war against Roe v. Wade and won this past June in the form of Justice Samuel Alito's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

It would be difficult to find any bishop who thinks that this war was not justified. Some bishops, however, do question some of the tactics employed in this war — for example, denying Communion to pro-choice Democrats.

As the bishops gather in Baltimore next week for their fall meeting, will they acknowledge the collateral damage caused by their tactics?

I am not talking about the negative impact of the decision as perceived by those who are pro-choice. Pro-choice advocates argue that the lives and health of women are being put at risk by the decision.

Bishops and pro-life advocates deny these charges.

But even those who see no problems with the Dobbs decision need to ask about the collateral damage caused by the strategy used by the bishops and their pro-life allies.

The pro-life strategy was simple: Support presidential and senatorial candidates who would put justices on the U.S. Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe.

In current American politics, that meant supporting Republican candidates.

Thus, by making abortion their "preeminent priority," the bishops made Donald Trump and the Republican Party their allies.

Killed Roe; but what else?

The Republicans, as promised, successfully killed Roe, but what else did they kill?

The Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe also gutted the Voting Rights Act that protected the rights of Black and other minority voters. They also invalidated environmental and other business regulations. This term it appears they look ready to cast aside affirmative action programs.

All of this is collateral damage from the bishops' decision to support stacking the court with conservative justices who would overturn Roe.

Republican legislators, meanwhile, have opposed almost every proposal that would have implemented Catholic social teaching.

They have opposed laws and regulations to deal with global warming. They ignore the warnings of scientists and Secretary-General António Guterres who warns, "We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator." The devastation that will be caused by global warming by the end of this century will be apocalyptic.

The earth and humanity are collateral damage from the decision of bishops to ally themselves with the Republican Party to defeat Roe.

Republicans also called for closing the border to refugees and immigrants.

Salvadoran and Haitian families fleeing the threat of gangs, Venezuelans escaping a Communist dictatorship and believers running from religious persecution: All are to be turned away by this country where almost all our ancestors were immigrants.

If the Holy Family crossed our border, we would send them back to Bethlehem and King Herod.

Migrants and refugees are collateral damage to the bishops' decision to back Republicans to overturn Roe.

Republicans have also voted against programs aimed at helping the poor: the expansion of Medicaid, the child tax credit, increases in the minimum wage and nutritional and housing programs. Republicans prefer massive tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich.

The poor are collateral damage to the bishops' decision to back Republicans to overturn Roe.

Former President Donald Trump, who appointed the justices who made the Dobbs decision possible, has also made American politics more polarized and even violent.

His refusal to accept the 2020 election results is a threat to democracy. He has turned the Republican Party, the party of fiscal conservatives, into the party that does not accept election results unless they win.

Democracy is collateral damage to the bishops' decision to support Republicans who would overturn Roe.

There is even a chance that the anti-abortion cause itself may be collateral damage to the alliance with Republicans.

Most voters in the midterm elections opposed Dobbs.

They voted against the bishops on every ballot measure dealing with abortion. Many candidates who opposed abortion without exceptions were also defeated.

The bishops will argue they did not endorse this collateral damage and, therefore should not be blamed for it.

But if you arm an ally who says he will use the arms to kill civilians, then you have to accept blame for their deaths.

The Republicans were never shy in proclaiming what they would do if they gained power.

To the extent that the bishops and pro-lifers helped the Republicans gain power, they must accept responsibility for what the Republicans did with that power.

In wars, generals always ignore or play down collateral damage as part of the cost of winning.

The bishops will do the same when they meet in Baltimore next week. They may even believe that this collateral damage was an acceptable cost of overturning Roe.

But as they celebrate their victory in Dobbs, they cannot ignore their responsibility for the collateral damage that came from their alliance with the Republican Party.

They must also consider how to make up for this damage.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

During his return flight from Bratislava, Slovakia, Sept. 15, the pope said that while there is no question that "abortion is homicide," bishops must look take a pastoral approach rather than wade into the political sphere.

"If we look at the history of the church, we can see that every time the bishops did not act like shepherds when dealing with a problem, they aligned themselves with political life, on political problems," he said.

The pope told journalists that when defending a principle, some bishops act in a way "that is not pastoral" and "enter the political sphere."

"And what should a shepherd do? Be a shepherd. Not going around condemning," the pope added. "They must be a shepherd, in God's style, which is closeness, compassion and tenderness."

"A shepherd that doesn't know how to act in God's style slips and enters into many things that are not of a shepherd." Continue reading

The chances are slim.

The origins of the document go back to the bishops' fight with pro-choice Catholic politicians, such as John Kerry, over the legalization of abortion.

Some bishops, like Cardinal Raymond Burke, wanted to punish pro-choice Catholic politicians by denying them Communion. Other bishops, such as the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, disagreed. George said he did not want his priests playing cop at the Communion rail.

The U.S. bishops' conference did what it normally does when bishops disagree: nothing. It left to each individual bishop to do what he thought best in his diocese.

After the election of President Joe Biden, a pro-choice Catholic, conservative bishops pushed for a document denying Communion to such politicians.

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, who heads the bishops' conference, responded to pressure from conservative bishops by appointing a committee to deal with the matter. He was publicly rebuked by other bishops for not following proper procedures, and eventually, the task was handed to the conference committee on doctrine.

The Vatican, meanwhile, made clear that canon law leaves the matter to local bishops. As a result, what started as a document on Communion and politicians morphed into a more general document on the Eucharist that the bishops will consider at the November 15-18 meeting.

Many bishops were upset by a Pew Research Center poll showing that only 31% of Catholics believe the church's teaching on transubstantiation, that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Sixty-one per cent believe that bread and wine are symbols.

So, what should the bishops say in their document on the Eucharist?

First, they should emphasize who should go to Communion, not who should not.

Francis speaks of the church as a field hospital where the sick and wounded are nourished and cared for. Jesus gave Communion to Judas. St. John Paul II gave Communion to Protestants and pro-choice politicians.

The bishops should presume goodwill on the part of anyone who comes to the Lord's table. If they want to be united with Christ and his community, they should be welcomed.

Second, the document should not use the word "transubstantiation," which is a theological concept based on Aristotelian philosophy, not the Scriptures. I believe that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, but I do not believe in the Aristotelian metaphysics of prime matter, substantial forms, substance and accidents.

Transubstantiation was a nice way of explaining the Eucharist to Aristotelians, but it makes absolutely no sense to people in the 21st century. Better to admit that the transformation is a mystery beyond our comprehension. If a person can say "Amen" when the minister says, "The body of Christ," they should be able to receive the Eucharist.

Third, the document should emphasize that the purpose of the Eucharist is not to bring Christ down on the altar so that we can worship him. If you want to worship Jesus, go to Benediction. The Eucharist is about worshipping the Father, not Jesus. Jesus never asked his disciples to worship him. His message was all about the Father, not himself.

The ultimate purpose of the Eucharist is not to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ but to transform those at the Eucharist into the body of Christ so that they can continue his mission in the world.

Fourth, the document should remind Catholics of origins of the Mass in two Jewish practices: the synagogue service and the Passover meal. The Catholic Mass' Liturgy of the Word is at its heart a synagogue service — Scripture readings, prayers, psalms, songs and preaching — with the addition of New Testament readings. The Liturgy of the Eucharist is the paschal meal as transformed by the experience of the risen Christ.

Originally, the Jewish followers of Jesus went to the synagogue on Saturday, then gathered on Sunday for the breaking of the bread. After they were kicked out of the synagogue, they simply performed a modified synagogue service before the breaking of the bread.

The Eucharist's roots in the paschal meal are harder for Catholics to understand because of our ignorance of the Jewish practice. Yes, we know that the Last Supper was a Passover celebration, but what does that mean?

For the Jews, the paschal meal is a memorial, remembering what God once did, what he does now and what he will do again.

It is a thanksgiving meal, thanking God for his action through history. It is a sacrificial meal, by which those participating are united with God.

It is a covenant meal where the covenant between God and his people is renewed. And it is a communal meal, done with others, not alone.

All of this should help us understand the Christian Eucharist.

At the heart of the paschal meal is the Barakah, or blessing, said by the father of the family at the meal.

The term "blessing" can be confusing to Christians because it is not the food that is blessed but God, as in "blessed be God forever." It is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.

The Jewish Passover prayer is also the model for the Christian Eucharistic prayer. My fifth recommendation is that the bishops' document focus on explaining Eucharistic prayer as the prayer, not just of the priest, but of everyone in the church.

The Eucharistic prayer, like the Passover prayer, remembers and gives thanks to God for his actions through history, with Christians adding the sending of Jesus and his institution of the new covenant and the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

This is followed by uniting with Christ in his sacrificial offering to the Father. In Eucharistic Prayer 4, we pray, "We offer you his body and blood, the acceptable sacrifice which brings salvation to the whole world."

Next, we pray that the Spirit will transform us into the body of Christ. Thus, in Eucharistic Prayer 3, we pray, "Grant that we, who are nourished by his body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ."

Theologians use Greek words to speak of the Eucharistic prayer as having a four-part structure: We remember/proclaim (anamnesis); We give thanks (eucharistia) and praise; We offer (anaphora); We ask for the Spirit (epiclesis).

Sadly, most priests only use Eucharistic Prayer 2, the shortest, written by the anti-pope Hippolytus.

The bishops should encourage priests to use all 13 approved Eucharistic prayers over the course of the church year.

They should also encourage priests to say the prayer slowly and in a way that makes clear this is not the private prayer of the priest but the essential prayer of the entire community.

That is why he uses "we" not "I" when he prays.

Sadly, too many Catholics only pay attention to the "words of consecration," not the entire prayer.

Finally, the bishops should have a chapter encouraging people to abandon the traditional Latin Mass for the Eucharist as reformed by Vatican II in order to encourage, as the Second Vatican Council said, the "full and active participation by all the people" in the liturgy.

If the bishops wrote such a document, Catholics would come to a better understanding of the Eucharist.

I will not hold my breath.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Despite Viganò's shocking call for Pope Francis' resignation, Cordileone was joined by a number of U.S. bishops who bolstered the testimony of the former nuncio. Among them, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted and Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, all of whom issued personal statements or gave interviews echoing Cordileone's praise of Viganò as a man of faith and integrity.

Today, those same bishops are also driving the controversial efforts aimed at pressing the U.S. bishops' conference to draft a document that will have far sweeping effects to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support pro-choice legislation.

When the U.S. bishops meet virtually June 16-18, they will vote on whether to proceed with drafting a document on the "meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the church," a proposal championed through a series of pastoral letters, media appearances, personal articles and social media campaigns by the aforementioned bishops.

Yet the manner in which the debate among the U.S. prelates has played out — and the medium in which the body of bishops will hold this debate — has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, including by longtime former staffers at the U.S. bishops' conference and high-ranking Vatican officials who see the rushed debate as a stark departure from Pope Francis' call for dialogue.

In May, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office, sent a letter to Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, urging caution and outlining the necessary process for moving forward with such a document, which included greater discussion among the bishops, Catholic politicians and other episcopal conferences.

In response, 67 bishops sent a private letter to Gomez, which was later leaked, requesting that the vote on whether to move forward with such a document be postponed until the bishops could meet together to discuss the proposal in person. Gomez has informed the body of bishops the vote will proceed without delay.

John Carr, who for a quarter of a century worked as the top policy advisor for the U.S. bishops, described the open display of divisions, both among themselves and with Rome, as "unprecedented."

"The idea that very direct warnings and guidance from the Vatican would simply be seen as an advisory opinion was not part of my experience," Carr told NCR.

"The relentless campaigning for this proposal, the dismissal of other priorities, the leaking of correspondence, the impugning the motives of others is unprecedented in my experience." Continue reading

• Image: NCR

The planned subject — "For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission" — remains the same but the new means adopted are now more intrinsically suited to such a topic.

The Synod of Bishops has been changing in the 21st century.

Previously, under Pope John Paul II, they were stale events, with bishops reading canned speeches and amending a text that had been prepared in advance.

Pope Benedict XVI introduced the innovation of allowing anyone to speak on any topic in the final hour of each day's general assembly, what I called "the karaoke hour."

Pope Francis has further increased the amount of genuine dialogue at each synod and now will broaden that dialogue with a universal period of preparation at the diocesan level, followed by a continent-wide dialogue, and finally the meeting in Rome.

What is more, as Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, made clear in announcing the new schedule, the consultation is intended to include the whole people of God.

"The governing principle of this consultation of the people of God is contained in the ancient principle 'that which touches upon all must be approved by all,' " Grech said in an interview.

"This is not about democracy, or populism or anything like that. Rather, it is the church that as the people of God, a people who by virtue of baptism, is an active subject in the life and mission of the church."

The churches of Latin America have been the most successful so far in developing a synodal process with the meetings of their continent-wide episcopal conference, CELAM.

The meetings include a great deal of prayer, beginning with prayer together for several days before turning to business items.

The documents they have produced — at Medellin, Puebla, Santo Domingo, Aparecida — have been among the most theologically fertile post-conciliar texts.

Ecclesiologist Massimo Faggioli recently wrote about synodality — albeit before the announcement from the Vatican — and about the ways it does, and does not, reflect models of sociopolitical organization in the ambient culture.

"The modern theology of synodality originates chronologically in contemporary theology of the Catholic Church, and geographically within societies in the liberal-democratic order in the Western hemisphere," he wrote.

"This is not just a coincidence."

We will look forward to Faggioli and other theologians explaining this lack of coincidence in greater detail!

Theologians — start your engines!

Indeed, Faggioli already has another column on this subject that examines some of the global issues in greater detail.

Certainly, in the history of the U.S. church, the provincial councils and, later, plenary councils of Baltimore reflected a synodal model in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the bishops' conference sometimes channelled a similar approach, overcoming wide differences of opinion at the outset of a discussion and yet forging a consensus.

For example, their 1983 pastoral letter "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response" was debated for more than two years, and the final vote was a nearly unanimous 238-9.

In 2004, on the contentious issue of Communion for pro-choice politicians, the bishops' conference adopted a document, "Catholics in Political Life", by a vote of 183-6.

In recent years, regrettably, the U.S. bishops have lost much of their ability to work together; indeed they do not seem to like each other very much, and so I worry how they will manage to engage in this new and promising synodal process. Continue reading

Why did some U.S. Catholic leaders rush to issue warnings about this vaccine even though the Vatican has already said that it can be morally acceptable to receive it?

Most importantly, why did these statements not start, as would be entirely compatible with Catholic moral teaching and the Vatican guidance, with a summary that said:

"All of these vaccines are safe, effective and morally acceptable under present circumstances, even if not perfect. Solidarity, especially with those at increased risk from Covid-19, calls us to cooperate in getting as many people vaccinated as soon as we can"?

Caveats, of course, must follow immediately: The actual statements were more nuanced than the headlines; the statements in question were issued by individual dioceses and chairs of committees at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and other bishops and dioceses have not universally adopted this approach; and the statements, properly understood, only counsel avoidance of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine relative to other options.

Nonetheless, the headlines these statements drew make the risk and cost of such statements clear:

• "Covid-19 Vaccines Draw Warnings From Some Catholic Bishops";
• "Catholic Archdiocese Bans COVID Vaccine Over Tenuous Link to Abortion";
• "U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says to avoid Johnson & Johnson vaccine if possible."

Compare the impression those headlines give with the Vatican guidance on this issue: "When ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available...it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process" (emphasis in original).

Recent statements from some U.S. bishops, properly understood, only counsel avoidance of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine relative to other options.

If you have been following these issues closely and are carefully focused on the caveats, then you already know how to explain the nuance that is missing from most of the headlines. (The corollary, of course, is that if—like most Catholics—you are not thoroughly well-versed on the technicalities of these issues, you are more likely to just be confused.)

There is a moral difference between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which only used cell lines derived decades ago from abortions for tests during their development process, and the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses such cell lines as part of its production.

That difference means that the new vaccine is less remotely connected to the evil of abortion than other currently approved vaccines—though, as the Vatican guidance makes clear, still morally acceptable when "ethically irreproachable" vaccines are not available.

There is no fundamental disagreement between the Vatican's guidance and the recent statements within the U.S. church on the underlying moral teaching, and certainly no formal theological error in any of them.

Instead, the confusion around this recent vaccine guidance arises from differing priorities given to the various parts of the moral calculus outlined in the Vatican's guidance, combined with what seems to be a pastorally irresponsible failure to plan for the predictable ways a Catholic recommendation to "avoid the Johnson & Johnson vaccine" would be covered and communicated in the secular press. Continue reading

All Churches start their response to abortion from the same baseline - the Commandment "thou shalt not kill". Yet they do not all arrive at the same destination. Why is this?

The Catholic Church is the only one that teaches unequivocally that the destruction of an embryo from the moment of conception onwards should be made a criminal offence, and that Catholic legislators have an absolute obligation to do everything they can to bring this about.

President Joe Biden's failure to consent to this position has got him into trouble with US Church leaders and earned a public rebuke from the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Helen Watt, who has replied to my initial Tablet blog on Biden and abortion, makes a number of assumptions that may explain this discrepancy.

It is taken for granted in traditional Catholic ethics, for instance, that there is no such thing as the lesser of two evils.

Evils are bad and you cannot choose between them.

You must refuse to do either of them.

Nor can you justify a bad act with the excuse that good may come of it.

Some acts are absolutely evil, intrinsically so. Abortion is among them. So consequentialism, utilitarianism and relativism are all out.

Traditional Catholic ethics also take it for granted that human life starts at the moment of conception.

And because of the traditional nine ways one may share in the sin of another that I mentioned in my original article, legislators who decline to offer that newly conceived embryo statutory protection must share in the guilt of the sin.

But Catholic ethics can deploy the "doctrine of double effect" to explain why killing enemy soldiers in a war, say, could be morally justified.

Many people outside the Church see that as simple hypocrisy.

Indeed there must be very few outside the Catholic Church who hold all these premises at once, or even some of them, even if they are otherwise fine and decent people.

Recognition of that fact is the fundamental omission from Helen Watt's article, from which all else flows. She assumes that what is self-evident to her must be self-evident to everybody.

Yet it is not obvious to non-Catholics that human life begins at the moment of conception, and they are not bound to accept the verdict of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae that it does.

They may not be persuaded by his arguments, and they are not under his authority.

They may say something like "human potential begins at the moment of conception" or "the process of becoming fully human is a gradual one".

That in fact is the implication of the present abortion law in Britain.

As in the United States, the crucial stage is viability, after which point the foetus could survive outside the womb. That is when legal protection starts.

Even among advocates of "a woman's right to choose", abortion after that stage of pregnancy presents a serious ethical dilemma.

Logically, a foetus that can survive outside the womb has to be treated as a separate individual with rights of its own, especially the right to life.

To kill it the moment it is born would be murder.

How can killing it five minutes earlier, when partially born, be anything else? Or a day earlier, before labour has started?

This is an argument that anti-abortionists could easily win, if they were less fixated on banning abortion at all stages.

I am not here arguing that the traditional Catholic ethical approach is right or wrong - for the purposes of this article I am remaining neutral - but pointing out simply that there is an alternative.

Catholics do tend to assume that there is only one way of arguing ethically, the Catholic method, and all other positions are wrong and involve a measure of bad faith or ignorance or both.

But a Catholic politician must know that many of those he represents will sincerely defend views opposed to his own.

And he knows that if they realised that he intended to try to impose his views on them, against their will, they would not vote for him. Continue reading

• Clifford Longley

May the Church appeal to secular leaders, including Catholics, to protect women and children from a practice increasingly funded and vigorously promoted both by governments and by non-governmental bodies?

In a letter on behalf of the US Bishops offering prayers for President Biden on his inauguration, Archbishop Jose Gomez reminds him that "our duty to love and our moral principles lead us to prudential judgments and positions that do not align neatly with the political categories of left or right… We are Catholics first, seeking only to follow Jesus Christ faithfully and to advance his vision for human fraternity and community."

After a generous reference to Biden's personal faith, Archbishop Gomez goes on to say that the bishops must proclaim the Gospel "in all its truth and power."

Abortion is "a direct attack on life that also wounds the woman and undermines the family".

It is not just a private matter, but "raises troubling and fundamental questions of fraternity, solidarity, and inclusion in the human community".

The archbishop notes: "As Pope Francis teaches, we cannot stay silent when nearly a million unborn lives are being cast aside in our country year after year through abortion."

This heartfelt but gentle appeal to a new Catholic President met, however, with a disapproving response from Clifford Longley.

Although the focus of the archbishop's remarks was less the banning of abortion than its expansion and funding at home and abroad, Longley focuses on the issue of making abortion illegal, equating the proscription of homicide before birth with the proscription of lying or adultery.

And we might agree, these actions too are unjust but not all injustice should be illegal - let alone all other forms of wrongdoing. Sometimes (as with perjury or fraud) lies are illegal and rightly so, but more often, they are not. As Longley suggests, making all lies illegal would likely lead to bad results.

True enough - but should we also place homicide of the innocent in the category of evils a society may freely tolerate?

The right to life is a foundational right: if protecting the innocent from homicide is not part of the mission of government, it is hard to think of many stronger candidates.

The basic equality of human beings, their origin at conception, and the need to protect them from deliberate, unjust attack, are matters of public reason: these are not arcane issues that only Catholics, at best, can understand.

And in terms of bad results, what bad result could be worse than the calamitous current and future toll of abortion both in the US and abroad where the US "solution" will now be funded with aid money that should be supporting human lives?

We have in fact experience of countries greatly increasing protection of the unborn, rather than decreasing it, without the dire effects so often appealed to by advocates of liberal abortion laws. Poland and Chile both strengthened their abortion laws without such dire results.

Attention to women's health - their actual, literal health - by treating or preventing issues such as hemorrhage and infection brings down maternal deaths.

Such deaths can be reduced in developing countries the way they were reduced in Western countries in the course of the twentieth century when maternal deaths declined due to the introduction of (for example) antibiotics, whether abortion laws were changed or not.

Abortion harms women: the violent loss of a baby prenatally is itself a serious harm.

Often that harm is felt consciously, sometimes bitterly, by the woman, but even where it is not, a harm has occurred. T

he desolating, violent act of abortion cannot be a private matter best left to individuals, much less something the State should fund and promote.

Nor should we assume that most Americans or citizens of developing countries even want the US government to fund abortions.

Many indeed want nothing less. Continue reading

• Dr Helen Watt is Senior Research Fellow at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre and a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.

The latest example is President Joe Biden, who has been reprimanded by the President of the United States Catholic Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, for including in his policy agenda "certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender", contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Opposition to abortion remains the Catholic bishops' highest priority, the archbishop said.

President Biden himself has said on more than one occasion that he personally opposes it, but he does not consider it right to impose his views on those who differ.

This is a bolt hole that many other Catholic politicians have used over the years.

They hardly needed to point out the obvious truth that to stand for election on a platform that promised to align the law of the land with strict Catholic teaching on all such issues would be to guarantee their non-election.

It is unlikely they would even be selected by their party as candidates.

These practical difficulties aside, there are good theological grounds for asserting that the "Biden bolt hole" - personally opposing abortion but not in favour of banning it - is sound.

In Herbert McCabe's book On Aquinas, (Continuum 2008) he discusses this very point.

"Aquinas asks whether the laws of a state ought to command every good action (in the sense of approving it) and he says ‘Yes'; civil law is about morality in that sense. He then asks whether civil law should forbid every bad action and he says ‘No'. Civil law is distinct from morality in this sense.

"Civil law is for the sake of the common good. It is quite often the case, he points out, that making a morally bad action illegal will do more harm to the common good than tolerating it... Toleration is not here a virtue but simply a concession to the necessary limitation of human law.

"Thus, for example, there is nothing logically odd about tolerating legal abortion and thinking it a great evil."

The contrary view - that a Catholic politician has a duty to stamp out all evils such as abortion - derives from something that used to be taught in Catholic schools, the "nine ways I may share in the guilt of another's sin".

It is not in the current Catholic Catechism and I do not know its present status, but it is still relevant to this discussion.

The nine ways are traditionally listed as: by counsel; command; consent; provocation; praise or flattery; concealment; being an active partner in the sin, silence and by defending the evil done.

At least three of these could be thrown at any Catholic politician who takes any other line than outright root and branch opposition to abortion. But it proves too much.

The implication is that every politician shares moral responsibility for every immoral act of whatever kind committed by anybody, that he or she has not actively campaigned to make illegal. Every act of adultery, for instance; even every lie. It seems Aquinas saw this reductio ad absurdum all too clearly.

There is a more serious difficulty in the interface of democracy and Catholic morality even than this one.

Pope John Paul II spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and according to his biographer, George Weigel, became the greatest defender of democracy and human rights of his age.

But JPII insisted, again and again, that democracy had to be founded upon certain fundamental moral principles.

Otherwise, it simply became an expression of the will of the majority, which could of course sanction moral evil if it saw fit to do so. Continue reading

• Clifford Longley

A small but vocal minority wants to punish the new president for his support of legalized abortion, gay rights and birth control.

These are the bishops who consider Biden a bad Catholic who should not be allowed to go to Communion.

But even the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, no liberal, thought this was a bad idea and told his priests not to play cop at the Communion rail.

A larger group of conservative bishops wants to avoid ecclesial penalties such as denying Biden Communion, but still want to wage war on the Democrats because of their support for these issues.

These are the bishops for whom abortion is the most important issue, trumping all other concerns.

They believe that there is no room for compromise.

A minority of liberal bishops would like to downplay differences with the administration and instead work with it on social justice and peace issues.

On Inauguration Day, Pope Francis appeared to support this faction when he sent Biden a message that did not mention areas of disagreement.

Rather, the pope prayed that God "guide your efforts to foster understanding, reconciliation and peace within the United States and among the nations of the world in order to advance the universal common good."

Such a message is not surprising.

The Vatican diplomatic service is idealistic in its goals but realistic in its approach to nations, including the United States. It looks for areas of agreement where it can work with other governments rather than look for fights.

It's not always apparent, in part because everyone likes to see a fight.

One U.S. ambassador to the Holy See described a meeting between a Democratic secretary of state and the Vatican where they spent almost all the time on areas of common interest.

As they were walking out the door, the Vatican official said, "You know, of course, that in the press release we will have to mention our disagreement over abortion."

The media focused on this one sentence of the press release, not knowing that abortion was not even discussed.

A large number of American bishops want to chew gum and walk at the same time.

They prefer to support the administration on issues where they agree and oppose it where they disagree.

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, tried to speak for these bishops in his statement on Inauguration Day.

His statement started on a positive note as he prayed that God would help the president "to heal the wounds caused by this pandemic, to ease our intense political and cultural divisions, and to bring people together with renewed dedication to America's founding purposes, to be one nation under God committed to liberty and equality for all."

He declared that the "bishops are not partisan players in our nation's politics," but "When we speak on issues in American public life, we try to guide consciences, and we offer principles."

He noted that "our moral principles lead us to prudential judgments and positions that do not align neatly with the political categories of left or right or the platforms of our two major political parties."

"I look forward to working with President Biden and his administration, and the new Congress," he wrote.

"As with every administration, there will be areas where we agree and work closely together and areas where we will have principled disagreement and strong opposition."

The first part of the letter put Gomez clearly in the ranks of bishops who wanted to chew gum and walk at the same time.

He went on to acknowledge that Biden, as a Catholic, will be a special case.

"It will be refreshing to engage with a President who clearly understands, in a deep and personal way, the importance of religious faith and institutions," wrote Gomez.

"Mr. Biden's piety and personal story, his moving witness to how his faith has brought him solace in times of darkness and tragedy, his longstanding commitment to the Gospel's priority for the poor — all of this I find hopeful and inspiring."

Certainly, this is one of the most positive statements to be made by a bishop on Biden's faith. No one can ever again call him a bad Catholic.

But the tone quickly changes in the next paragraph when the conference president stated, "our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences."

The next four paragraphs continue to lay out in detail the bishops' differences with the new Biden administration on these issues. There are no paragraphs detailing their areas of agreement.

Reports coming from Rome indicate that the Vatican was not happy with the conference statement, feeling it was too negative for such an occasion. The bishops did not issue a similar statement when Trump was inaugurated.

In an unusual move, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich criticized Gomez's statement.

"Today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an ill-considered statement on the day of President Biden's inauguration," he tweeted.

"Aside from the fact that there is seemingly no precedent for doing so, the statement, critical of President Biden, came as a surprise to many bishops, who received it just hours before it was released."

He said that the statement was crafted without the normal collegial consultation necessary for such an important document.

Although Gomez may have wanted to chew gum and walk at the same time, the letter came off emphasizing the bishops' differences with the new administration.

The bishops came across as obstructionists at a time when even Republicans are mouthing bipartisan words.

The bishops' faction that wants to wage war on the administration appears to still be in control of the bishops' conference.

Whether bishops like Cupich will be able to turn around the Titanic before it crashes remains to be seen.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Just as Chile's 34 bishops resigned in May after revelations of sexual abuse and corruption, US bishops should also submit their resignations to Pope Francis.

Doing so would show the public an act of penance and a "willing abdication of earthly status," say those who are urging the bishops to resign.

"Only then might the wrenching work of healing begin," a blog from the group says.

The call for the bishops' resignation came in response to Tuesday's release of a grand jury report that detailed seven decades of sexual abuse by clergy and cover-up by church leaders in six dioceses in Pennsylvania.

The report followed recent allegations that former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, sexually abused two children and adult seminarians.

"We are brought to our knees in revulsion and shame by the abominations that these priests committed against innocent children," the statement said.

"We are sickened in equal measure by the conspiracy of silence among bishops who exploited victims' wounds as collateral in self-protection and the preservation of power. It is clear that it was the complicity of the powerful that allowed this radical evil to flourish with impunity."

While the group acknowledges some bishops are "humble servants and well-intentioned pastors," it still urges a collective resignation by all bishops because of the "systemic nature of this evil."

"Systemic sin cannot be ended through individual goodwill. Its wounds are not healed through statements, internal investigations or public relations campaigns but rather through collective accountability, transparency and truth-telling," the statement from the group said.

"We are responsible for the house we live in, even if we did not build it ourselves," it said.

The statement also expressed support for "sound proposals" such as those for external investigations like the one in Pennsylvania, which "would begin to convert this ecclesial culture of violence into one of transparency, accountability, humility, safety and earned trust."

But "truth-telling and repentance are prerequisites to conversion" at the institutional as well as individual level, the statement said, noting that "no genuine process of healing and reform can begin" without such a demonstration of repentance.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Daily Theology
• Image: USA Today

They say it is morally irresponsible, dangerously ineffective and unwise.

Rather than keeping migrants out of the United States, they would like the administration to be more welcoming.

In a statement from the Hope Border Institute, Bishop Mark Seitz says deploying troops is "a hurtful attack on migrants, our welcoming border culture, and our shared values as Americans."

Instead of attacking migrants, Seitz says "only by working together to address the dehumanising poverty and insecurity in our sister countries in Latin America and around the world will we resolve the root causes that drive migration."

Bishop Daniel E. Flores is also trying to debunk notions of an "invasion" of Central American migrants making their way through Mexico to the United States.

He explained migrants "travel in numbers for self-protection against gangs" and noted that many "Central Americans fleeing violence in their native country try to settle in Mexico.

"Central Americans have a right in US law to apply for asylum," he said.

Another Catholic leader, Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, called Trump's decision to send the National Guard to the border "a senseless action and a disgrace on the administration."

"These measures manifest represion (sic), fear, a perception that everyone is an enemy, and a very clear message: we don't care about anybody else. This is not the American Spirit," he tweeted.

The Mexican bishops' conference has also expressed dismay and concern for the safety of Mexican and Latin American migrants.

"It's highly risky for our Mexican and Latin American people to have a semi-militarised border ..." a tweet from the Mexican bishops' conference said.

Despite his opponents' views, Trump is justifying his request for the National Guard's help.

He says they are needed to deter illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

In his opinion, the "lawlessness" at the border is "fundamentally incompatible with the safety, security and sovereignty of the American people."

Over the past few weeks, over 1,500 migrants from Central America have been making their way through Mexico, seeking relief from violence in their home countries.

Mexico has broken up groups traveling together, drawing praise from Trump.

Many of the migrants have been given temporary transit visas. Some intend to request asylum in the United States. Others say they plan to ask for humanitarian visas to stay in Mexico.

Source

• America Magazine
• Crux Now
• Image: PressTV

"The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in unity with Pope Francis, strongly supports environmental stewardship and has called consistently for 'our own country to curtail carbon emissions,'" said Bishop Frank J Dewane of Florida.

"This Executive Order places a number of environmental protections in jeopardy and moves the U.S. away from a national carbon standard, all without adopting a sufficient plan for ensuring proper care for people and creation," he added.

Dewane said the US is "unlikely to meet its domestic and international mitigation goals."

Fr Joe Ryan (Chair) and Barbara Kentish (Fieldworker) of the Westminster Justice and Peace Commission echo Dewane's comments.

Speaking on behalf of the Commission, they say Trump's environment plans cut across all the attempts Pope Francis and the Catholic Church have been making to find a new way of caring for creation.

Sources

• Independent Catholic News
• Independent Catholic News
• Image: Catholic Herald

Archbishop Gomez, who is the vice president of the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, said immigration is the "human rights test of our time".

Commenting on Trump's immigration laws, he said having a policy that solely focuses on deportations without addressing immigration system reform risks causing "a human rights nightmare."

It is not morally acceptable just to say: "It's their [the immigrants'] own fault," or "This is what they get for breaking our laws," he said.

"They are still people, children of God, no matter what they did wrong," Archbishop Gomez said.

He said he was concerned because people seem to be incapable of showing mercy, or to see in another person, for example, an unauthorized immigrant, a child of God.

"And so we are willing to accept injustices and abuses that we should never accept," he said.

Texan Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller has also been pleading with the government to stop plans that would separate children from mothers in immigration detention centers.

At the same time, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin supported extending the residency of a 59-year-old grandfather who was facing deportation after living in the U.S. for 25 years.

Tobin said although he cannot help all the 11 million undocumented people in the US, he hope's his support will say "Look they've got faces, they've got histories and there's a lot of advantage to leaving them alone."

Source

• Catholic Sentinel
• Crux
• Image: US Law Center