Tag: Bishops

Can the Church Help Restore America’s Values?

In a recent essay I explained that America’s intellectual and moral decline can be reversed by restoring the ideas and practices foolishly discarded in recent decades—the belief that all humans are imperfect; that good and evil (sin and virtue) are...

Why Defrocking is Not the Answer

I have written before concerning Pope Francis’ contempt for conservative Catholics. One such example of that contempt was his statement that “in the United States . . . there is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organized and...

The Catholic Hierarchy and the Mideast Conflict

“The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away–and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away...

Restoring Catholic Wisdom, Part 3

Part 1 of this essay argued that the Catholic Church desperately needs to renew its historic teachings, and the Bishops and Cardinals need to lead the effort with the help of informed laypeople. Part 2 explained why the teachings must be presented...

Pope Francis Offers Guidance

On November 22 five staff from America Magazine, two Jesuits and three laypeople, interviewed Pope Francis on topics ranging from polarization in the U.S. church to racism, the war in Ukraine, the Vatican’s relations with China, and...

Catholic Bishops and Leadership

A recent study revealed that half the diocesan priests in the U.S. are experiencing significant burnout. The researchers found that the “major factor” for this is the low “level of trust between a priest and his bishop.“ When asked whom...

The Unfathomable Silence of the Shepherds

The Shepherd metaphor is one of the clearest and most vivid in all of Scripture and not surprisingly was adopted by the Church and used for millennia to describe the relationship of its bishops with its people. The Bible is filled with references to...

What Informed Catholics Expect of Prelates

As I noted in “Overcoming Our Social Chaos”  and “A Layman’s Memo to Catholic Prelates” the future of both Catholic Church and Western Civilization will largely depend on the prelates’ willingness to meet their leadership responsibilities. The...