Stephen P. White

Most Catholics simply don’t know what all this talk of “synodality” is supposed to mean.

As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI nears the end of his long and extraordinary life, the tussling over his legacy has already begun in earnest.

One of the challenges preventing a wider reception of the Church’s modern social teaching is that there is some confusion about just what Catholic social teaching is.

If those directing the Synod at every level of the Church present it in worldly terms – political, bureaucratic, ideological terms – then it will surely become merely that.

The consequences for the Church of ultra-mundane and aggressively banal liturgies are impossible to deny.

We rejoice during Advent as an expression of gratitude for the wondrous and unmerited gift of the Incarnation. But our rejoicing is not only a response to the gift of salvation; it is an imitation of the Father, who rejoices over us.

The reality is that sexual abuse – by clergy or anyone else, of minors or adults – is never going to be completely eradicated. But we can hope for a time, be it decades or centuries from now, when abuse in the Church is not seen as a global crisis.

The deep divisions in the Church make it clear that the Church needs a big change. The document just passed by the U.S. bishops on the Eucharist isn’t it. But it might prove an important brick in beginning lasting renewal.

Archbishop José Gomez has a long track-record of speaking on racism and social injustice in a way that consistently challenges both the injustice of the status quo and the instrumentalization of the faith as a mere means to political ends.

For more than 40 years, President Biden (and others) have used the interminable “dialogue” in the Church as a pretense for using their Catholic faith as political cover for promoting abortion. The freshness of that dialogue turned rancid long ago.

Rome remembers her martyrs, and what an astonishing place to be allowed to join in that remembrance. I am filled with a pilgrim’s gratitude.

As Christians, we always have hope. It is not a hope for worldly success, or even that we will live to see the ecclesial (and social and political and cultural) renewal we hope will come. It is the hope that comes from knowing that however grim the battle, the war has already been won. Let us be happy warriors.