Tom Roberts

For Christians, the search for our moral bearings amid the horrific violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may lie not so much in a conclusive statement of right and wrong. It may, instead, lie in encounter.

Archbishop Alexander Sample has barred Mass from a Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical venture that has been underway and allowed for nearly 40 years. Amid Catholic questions about authority, Sample’s ban is distressingly archaic.

The inauguration of anti-corruption reformer Bernardo Arévalo as president of Guatemala comes after decades of struggle to elevate the country's marginalized, especially women and the Indigenous population. 

“Provocative pop-ups like Catholics for Catholics are ecclesiastical equivalents of a financial scam,” writes Tom Roberts. “Don’t give away the password to your spiritual account.”

For Jewish Israeli academic Neve Gordon, “winning” is an impossible end to the invasion of Gaza, and the Israel-Hamas war is but the latest and grimmest evidence of a doomed strategy.

Maybe Busch is as exhausted as the rest of us with the tensions and divisions in the U.S. church. But whatever the cost of the fancy dinners, it is a pittance compared to the money he has invested in divisive politics.

Listen: Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister has a reputation as one who dares to ask big, bold questions. Explore them with her in this podcast conversation with her friend and biographer, former NCR editor Tom Roberts.

Listen: Sr. Joan Chittister takes us from her experience of God as a youngster alone in a church to her rejection of the all-male stereotype of a God imagined by men, to a God that cannot fit into convenient descriptions.

The decadeslong effort to make unrestricted capitalism compatible with Catholic teaching keeps running into obstacles in Vatican II documents, papal encyclicals, bishops' pastoral letters, and Christian Scriptures.

Tom Roberts says we need to do what we can to counter President Trump's inane noise. Along with protests and voting, he suggests occasional, quiet, understanding conversation with citizens who happen to wear military uniforms.