The cultural disarmament of progressive Catholic bishops Conservative bishops and their allies, especially in the United States, continue to overshadow their more progressive confreres in putting forth a vision for the Church
Archbishop Charles Chaput as he is welcomed by Pope Francis during his weekly General Audience in Saint Peter s Square. Vatican City, 26 March 2014. (Photo by EPA/Osservatore Romano/MaxPPP)
Archbishop Charles Chaput, who retired as the ordinary of Philadelphia a little more than a year ago, has just published his latest book.
The 76-year-old Capuchin is one of the leading American bishops driving culture war Catholicism in the United States.
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A schism in the faith between liberals and conservatives is being exacerbated by a group of plutocrats.
A plaque at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California
“This is what they have done,” Robert Busch writes with weary outrage as he forwards me a photograph of a group of nuns, one of them wearing a “Stop the Steal” button, cheerfully joining President Trump’s January 6 rally in Washington, D.C. Busch, who lives in Redwood City, California, recently formed a study group on economic justice within the Thomas Merton Center, which collaborates with members of the St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Palo Alto. Like most of his fellow study group members, he calls himself a “Francis Catholic,” in deference to Pope Francis. He has more of a natural affinity with the “Nuns on the Bus” a Catholic group that advocates for a range of social justice issues than with the “Stop the Steal” sisters. He usually has at the tip of his
U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump pose outside the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington June 2, 2020, the 41st anniversary of beginning of pope s 1979 historic visit to Poland. (CNS/Reuters/Tom Brenner)
The clues were emblazoned on the red hats and in the chants at every rally: Make America Great Again! Fake news! Lock her up! You re fired! Drain the swamp! Build a wall! These slogans had the power to whip the crowd into a frenzy, giving Trump a fresh source of energy or as psychologists would say, narcissistic supplies.
As he paced the stage, smiling, clapping, egging them on, he did not need to offer a substantive political message. The glib slogans, chanted at every rally, gave him cover for an incoherent foreign policy and distraction from the absence of a national plan to address the deadly coronavirus the suffering it causes never seemed to bother him.