Stephen P. White

If Rome thinks delaying action by American bishops or weakening conference leadership is in the best interests of American Catholics, then they are gravely mistaken. The last thing American Catholics need right now is to be treated as pawns in an ecclesiastical power struggle.

There is one question that cuts to the heart of the outrage and anger felt by millions of Catholic faithful: What kind of father, what kind of man, responds to the abuse of his own children the way so many of our bishops have responded to the abuse of their own?

Maybe the humiliation and suffering the Catholic Church in the United States is undergoing will bear fruit in the long run. But it’s hard to see how good comes from the current crisis unless there is a renewed sense in the Church that what is at stake is the salvation of souls.

Pope Francis has made it clear that he doesn’t want the abuse crisis to crowd out a discussion at the synod of the pastoral needs of young people. That’s understandable, but the topic of abuse is also unavoidable.

While Pope Francis’s condemnation of the sexual abuse of children has been unequivocal (one would expect no less), it’s still not entirely clear that he grasps just how dire is the crisis of confidence in the bishops themselves.

The Polish situation is more complicated than easy analogies to Trumpism would suggest. Poland is striving, in a stumbling and halting way, to maintain its identity, an identity that is both European and inextricably Catholic.

Whatever the fruits of today’s meeting between the USCCB delegation and Pope Francis, it’s essential to understand that the reforms the Church in the United States needs will come with and through the pope and his brother bishops – with and through Peter and his fellow apostles – or it will not come.

What began as a child-sex-abuse scandal has mushroomed into the greatest crisis of confidence in the Catholic hierarchy since the Reformation. What happens next will define Pope Francis’ entire pontificate, and much more.

Pope Francis’s strategy of holy disruption is a deliberate evangelical strategy, and it is, perhaps, a strategy perfectly tailored to our times—but it is also risky, especially in this secular era.

Alfie Evans was treated – not as a person in full, the son of a father and mother – but as a naked individual whose dignity consists in his “interests,” and who was subject to the ministrations of impersonal forces of the state.

Ross Douthat, in his new book, To Change the Church, looks at Pope Francis’s pontificate, examining both the missed opportunities and the ongoing search for a new, stable synthesis.

The greatest, most glaring inconsistency in Catholic witness to human dignity and the sanctity of life is the widespread Catholic facilitation of, and support for, the killing of innocent children through abortion.