Michael Sean Winters

In an interview with EWTN, Bishop Robert Barron discussed complex historical and ideological realities of religion in the public square. 

We are all still digesting Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and wondering what difference it will make. What are the next steps in implementing the vision of Catholic social doctrine?

Social and technological changes point to the need for a new social contract. If the Democrats would turn to the pope for inspiration, they'd shed their image as cultural libertarians with a preference for big government.

Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical points to our anthropological vocation grounded in the revelation of Jesus Christ, our ability to collaborate with our creator God and our capacity for belief in that which we cannot see.

NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters has some ideas for the Democrats to create a winning formula not just for the midterms but for a long-term governing majority.

"The future of higher education, and perhaps of democracy, may depend upon the willingness of liberal leaders and intellectuals to engage with the Catholic intellectual tradition, and vice versa," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters.

There's been no conspiracy to omit the mention of Jesus Christ, but there has been a hesitancy to place him at the center of our events. Pope Leo XIV aims to correct this state of affairs, writes Michael Sean Winters.

Trump campaigned on the promise that he would fix high prices and avoid foreign wars. Instead, he has embroiled the nation in a war that has failed to meet any of the president's own stated criteria for attacking Iran.

Since his election, Leo has been pursuing a unity that is founded on the person of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel, writes NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters.

The contribution of American Catholics to the development of the Holy See's ideas are noteworthy: religious liberty and organized labor, writes NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters.

Jimmy Kimmel's joke — "Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow" —  was in bad taste. But the controversy surrounding it exposes a great deal of hypocrisy and the facile way people equate words and deeds.

Pope Leo XIV's missionary experience in Peru was the love of his life, and in Africa we witnessed the pope's joy in proclaiming the Gospel and in witnessing the reception the Gospel receives.

"The reason the pope vs. president meme is likely to continue is not the lousy arguments with which acolytes are arming the White House," writes NCR's Michael Sean  Winters. "It is the means."

Vice President JD Vance needs to better understand the moral truths of Christianity before he tries to apply them, especially the truths of just war theory, writes NCR columnist Michael Sean Winters.

President Donald Trump is tossing around the idea of pulling the United States out of NATO. It comes as no surprise that a narcissist like Trump fails to grasp how an alliance works.

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Washington, D.C. Cardinal Robert McElroy and Newark, New Jersey, Cardinal Joseph Tobin forcefully echoed Pope Leo XIV's calls for peace and repeated his, and their own, distress about the Trump administration's anti-immigrant policies.

"His kingdom has come, but it is not yet here in its fullness," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters. "This is the essential tension of the Christian life."

"As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation, it is a hideous fact that we are simultaneously witnessing the historical nadir of our country's political leadership," writes NCR's Michael Sean Winters. 

Who could have imagined that salvation would come through such an awesome series of events? Who, in Jesus' time or in our own, would dare God to pay such a price as expiation for our sins?

 An 1844 case dismissed the argument President Donald Trump is making.