Here are some highlights from John Gehring’s Commonweal interview with Bishop John Stowe of Lexington: I do believe that climate issues are not getting enough attention among the Church’s leadership. Specifically, I think we bishops need to help people connect their personal and communal faith to the importance of reverence for creation and the necessary… Read More Bishop Stowe: Greater Urgency Needed on Climate Issues and Racism

via the BBC: peaking from the Vatican for BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, the Pope talked of crises including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and economic difficulties, and urged the world to respond to them with vision and radical decisions, so as not to “waste opportunities” that the current challenges present. “We can… Read More Pope Urges ‘Radical’ Climate Response

Stephanie H. Murray writes: There is a cultural weight dangling from the yoke of modern American parenthood — one that is probably beyond the government to alleviate. The very same logic of self-sufficiency that rationalizes our anemic family policies — “Don’t have kids if you can’t afford them” — underpins our social expectations for children,… Read More American Culture vs. Parenting

Tish Harrison Warren writes: For a religious holiday, All Saints’ Day is surprisingly earthy. It reminds me that for all of us — so-called religious or non-religious people alike — faith and spirituality are shaped in profoundly relational ways. No one is a “freethinker.” None of us come to what we believe on our own.… Read More A Reminder on All Saints’ Day

via the Vatican: I also want to refer to a silent pandemic that has been afflicting children, teenagers and young people of every social class for years; and which I believe, in this time of isolation, has spread further still. It is the stress of chronic anxiety, linked to various factors such as hyperconnectivity, disorientation… Read More Pope Francis on Building  ‘Bridges of Love’

Millennial writer Daniel R. DiLeo, Sabrina Danielsen, and write Emily E. Burke: The publication of Laudato Si’ was a landmark moment in the fight against climate change. Secular environmentalists were encouraged to see such a prominent global leader devote one of his most powerful tools to their cause. Many American Catholics hoped the encyclical would inspire… Read More Most US Bishops Silent on Climate Change, New Study Shows

via the Vatican: In a video message, Pope Francis thanked them for their “enthusiasm” in carrying out “the mission to give a new soul to the economy”. He highlighted the urgent need to change the present economic paradigm, as the world struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, which, he noted, has dramatically “amplified the deep inequalities”… Read More Pope Francis: Give a New Soul to the Economy, Tackle Inequality