Monday, September 7, 2026

A TIME TO BE BRAVE

This September carries another memory: the beautiful morning twenty-five years ago when in a matter of hours so much that had seemed secure suddenly was not. Much of our world feels that way now.

THE PROBLEM WITH ‘WOMEN’S ORDINATION’

By restricting the priesthood to men, the Catholic Church distorts humanity’s sacramental encounter with God and violates a fundamental right to spiritual discernment, creating a injustice that sacralizes global gender inequality.

When ‘thy will be done’ means saying goodbye to someone you love

Faith in Focus

When ‘thy will be done’ means saying goodbye to someone you love

by John Eliot Jordan September 4, 2026

As I drove my wife to the hospital, the baby wouldn’t stop kicking. Still a week from his grand entrance, he was showing his impatience by inflicting pain on his mother. But this wasn’t the day we would finally say hello to my son. It was the one where we would say goodbye to my grandmother. She was 92, a fact everyone who knew her always forgot. So vibrant and funny, she made us all assume she would be around forever. But she was dying. And yet, as Carlie and I pulled in, we were both still holding out for a miracle.

The three great loves of Wendell Berry

Short Take

The three great loves of Wendell Berry

by Nathan Beacom September 4, 2026

FILE - Wendell Berry talks with a reporter at his home in Port Royal, Ky., March 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke, File) — Wendell Berry talks with a reporter at his home in Port Royal, Ky., on March 10, 2011. Credit: AP Photo/Ed Reinke, File

In 1956, the great French philosopher Jacques Maritain gave a lecture at the University of Chicago in which he rebuked his fellow Europeans for a “grand slander” against America. “All this talk about American materialism is no more than a curtain of silly gossip and slander,” he said. “What I know is that the basic characteristics of the American people are generosity, good will, the sense of human fellowship.”

For Maritain, the United States was not the shallow image that even some Americans hold. Yes, there is a part of the nation that is all about commerce, advertising and consumption, but there is a parallel, and equally American, spiritual current that is about taking care of the land and our neighbors and seeing the dignity in what is humble.

Podcast: John Dear hosts Colleen Kelly, founder of peace group after 9/11

September 7, 2026

As AI shapes work, US bishops urge safeguards for low-wage and young workers

Unions march in the annual Labor Day parade in Milwaukee on Sept. 4, 2023. (Dreamstime/Aaron Lemay)

As AI shapes work, US bishops urge safeguards for low-wage and young workers

News

ncr

Brian Fraga

Sunday, September 6, 2026

THE CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE GUIDING POPES THROUGH TECH UPHEAVALS

While the technology might be new, the principles guiding the pope’s perspectives have deep roots. Subsidiarity is a core tenet of Catholic social teaching that has guided the church’s response to technological upheavals for almost a century. Simply defined, subsidiarity means that, whenever possible, decisions should be made by the people most affected by them.