President Donald Trump recently announced that refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries would be denied entry into the United States. As a white, American-born school teacher in a Midwest Catholic school, I didn’t anticipate that this would change my day-to-day life very much. Then a student’s prayer stopped me in my tracks. In my theology… Read More Burritos, Microwaves, and Walls—Lessons in Adulting from High Schoolers

As a certain group of right-wing American Catholics continues to promote free market fundamentalism—sometimes very amiably with rhetorical commitments to a (diminished) social  safety net and maybe even with a nod to an increase in the earned income tax credit—Pope Francis has once again affirmed the Church’s fundamental opposition to this ideology (however cleverly marketed)… Read More Pope Francis Challenges Profit-Obsessed Capitalism and Our Complacency

During the last presidential election, it was not unusual for commentators to reference Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as a counter-narrative to the rise of Donald Trump. The story of an immigrant, who was integrally involved in the American experiment, who was concerned about the dangers of populist politics in particular, resonated with many across the political… Read More A Politics of Memory and Hope: The Catholic Political Ethos of In the Heights

We witnessed to the right to life of children in the womb on Friday, and we witnessed to the right to life of refugees yesterday. I have been reflecting on the simple truth behind both actions. Every single person is created with intrinsic dignity. Every single person is a reflection of eternity, a little glimpse… Read More Why We are Resisting

It has been a week, only a week, since President Donald Trump took office. As I look back at the previous week, I cannot believe it has only been one week. Constant tweeting and talk about crowd sizes is dangerous misdirection – the overwhelming theme of the week, in my opinion, was violence. The World… Read More The Normalization of Violence: Week One in the Trump Era