A look at how U.S. politics distort Catholic social justice

 

Podcasts

A look at how U.S. politics distort Catholic social justice

The Editors   US Catholics

Why our Catholic family attends a Protestant church

 

In the Pews

Why our Catholic family attends a Protestant church

Don Clemmer  US Catholic

Posted inNews

Msgr. Roger Landry restricted from ministry during investigation into alleged misconduct

by Gina Christian - OSV News September 11, 202

Msgr. Roger J. Landry, director of the Pontifical Mission Societies USA, speaks with people outside Holy Family Church in New York City Sept. 9, 2024. TPMS USA announced Sept. 11, 2026, that Msgr. Landry has taken a temporary leave from his position as director of the organization following allegations he violated priestly conduct codes for two dioceses with which he is affiliated. An investigation is ongoing. Credit: OSV News photo/Gregory A. Shemitz

(OSV News) — Msgr. Roger J. Landry has taken a temporary leave from his position as director of the Pontifical Mission Societies USA, following allegations he violated priestly conduct codes for two dioceses with which he is affiliated.

The news was announced by both TPMS USA and the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, where Msgr. Landry is incardinated, in separate statements issued Sept. 11.

Both statements confirmed the allegations do not involve minors. The Diocese of Fall River emphasized in its statement that Msgr. Landry is “entitled to the presumption of innocence while the investigation continues.”

 

When God Died

Putting ‘Time’ Magazine’s 1966 Holy Week cover in context

Kenneth L. Woodward

September 9, 2026

Please email comments to letters@commonwealmagazine.org.

This story is included in these collections:

Still Not Dead

Theologian Harvey Cox in 1973 (Wikimedia Commons)

In the early 1960s, while the attention of Catholics was focused on Vatican II, American (essentially Protestant) theology experienced a rush of intellectual mood swings that raised fundamental questions: How can we talk about God in secular societies that see no need for religion? Who or what is the God we want to talk about? Is there a God in the first place?

The titles of the most talked-about books give a flavor of those feverish few years: Honest to God (1963), in which Anglican bishop John A. T. Robinson ventured a Christianity without religion. In The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (1963), Paul van Buren proposed a theology without metaphysics. In The Secular City (1965), Harvey Cox celebrated secularization as the logical outcome of biblical religion. By 1967, the mood had shifted yet again to Jürgen Moltmann’s more activist and future-oriented Theology of Hope.

With 19 Emmy nods, 'Widow's Bay' gets the link between terror and togetherness

 

Culture

With 19 Emmy nods, 'Widow's Bay' gets the link between terror and togetherness

Rebecca Bratten Weiss  ncr

Sept. 27, 2026: Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

September 11, 2026

Sept. 27, 2026: Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sr. Mary M. McGlone  ncr

 

The Weekly Dispatch

With sex abuse allegations, some priests wonder: Will I be presumed innocent until proven guilty?

But some experts are hesitant to consider policy changes based on scattered reports of erroneous allegations.

by Kevin Clarke September 10, 2026

Father Michael Pfleger, senior pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago, is pictured in a file photo. In an Aug. 24, 2026, letter to St. Sabina parishioners, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich said that a recently made allegation against Father Pfleger had been "thoroughly reviewed" and found unsubstantiated. (OSV News photo/Jim Young, Reuters)

More than 20 years after the abuse crisis first roiled the U.S. Catholic Church, the response this summer from one accused priest was dramatic and unprecedented. Father Michael Pfleger, the at-times controversial leader of a South Side Chicago parish, fiercely objected to an archdiocesan letter that disclosed an allegation of a decades-old incident of sexual assault on a child.

 

9/11 Changed Everything

Twenty-five years later, we’re still dealing with its ramifications.

Dominic Preziosi

September 10, 2026

Please email comments to letters@commonwealmagazine.org.

The south tower of the World Trade Center bursts into flames after being struck by United Airlines Flight 175 in New York on September 11, 2001 (OSV News photo/Sean Adair, Reuters).

At 8:45 on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was alone in my office on the thirty-first floor of the midtown Manhattan building I commuted to every day from Brooklyn. I was starting up my computer when something cast a brief fluttering shadow over the desk and carpeting. My first thought was birds, though that seemed strange; I had never seen birds up here before, this high. The building itself was set at an angle to the cross-streets, East Thirty-Third and Park Avenue South, so that from my window there was a clear, unobstructed view southeast along the East River to the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, and downtown to the towers of the World Trade Center. They dominated the sky, and by habit that’s where my eyes went, looking for a glimpse of whatever had passed in front of the bright late-summer sun. Inexplicably, there was a wedge-shaped gash in the north tower. I searched the still-quiet floor looking for someone who might be able to confirm what I was seeing. The woman I brought back to my window acknowledged what by then was a gaping hole ringed in wispy orange flame.