Michael Sean Winters

Michael Sean Winters: While the dynamics are different in each party, religion is likely to play a role in determining the outcomes in both the Democratic and Republican races in the midterm primary season.

Columnist Michael Sean Winters shares links about the elections in Slovenia and France, polarization in education in Tennessee, and more.

Michael Sean Winters: Texas held its primary elections in March, but for the rest of the U.S., primary season begins in May. The results in these midterm primaries over the next few months will achieve two things.

Michael Sean Winters: There's no more "Catholic bloc" among French voters, but Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are looking for votes wherever they can find them. Catholics loom more in French history than in today's electorate.

Michael Sean Winters: Elizabeth Warren urges Dems to pass needed legislation to avoid being clobbered in the midterms; report on A.J. Oliver, who was pushed out as a Democratic committee chair due to his pro-life views.

Sen. Rick Scott thinks middle- and working-class voters should pay more taxes. And he wants to sunset Social Security and Medicare. The Dems need to use his "Rescue America" plan to hold on to seats in the midterms.

Michael Sean Winters: A look at the difficult-to-fathom decision by some very conservative Republicans to pick a fight with Disney; a high school junior's essay is a study in true liberal values.

Michael Sean Winters: Conservative prelates published a letter to the German bishops complaining about their Synodal Path. This kerfuffle was instructive about the synodal process and its limits, not about how the process will end.

Historian John McGreevy is a great choice for University of Notre Dame provost. He is a scholar, first and foremost

If there was no Last Supper, no agony in the garden, no betrayal, no crucifixion and no empty tomb, we would be the most miserable of people. We need the empty tomb.

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Question about moral red lines bewilders Mitch McConnell; latest right-wing attack in the culture wars; impounding superyachts; an orchestra's epic fail.

Michael Sean Winters: The successful effort to organize a union at an Amazon facility was led by the workers themselves. It points the way towards more successful organizing campaigns, including at Catholic institutions.

Michael Sean Winters: We believe that God is all-loving and all-powerful, but where was that love and that power this past month when they were needed in Ukraine?

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Legitimacy of elections questioned in Green Bay, Wisconsin; clergy involved in politics; the role of religion in Russian invasion of Ukraine and more

Michael Sean Winters: A new history of Winston Churchill, focusing on his involvement with war, sheds light on how the changes in war fighting capabilities created new, nightmarish moral challenges.

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Koch Industries in Russia; Trump's candidate lags in Georgia; Mick Mulvaney and CBS; Dorothy Day, idealization and holiness; forgiving student loan debt.

Michael Sean Winters: CUA will never be able to renew itself so long as its vision of Catholic identity is crimped, defined by same-sex dorms and resistance to Francis in the theology department, and sectarian.

Michael Sean Winters: A budget is always as much a political and a moral document as it is a fiscal one. The political and moral are thoroughly intertwined. President Joe Biden's budget proposal is no exception.

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Trump dives into state races; Mideast diplomacy; Ginni Thomas' religious certainty; labeling bishops "modernist"; 1999 protesters can say, "We told you so."

Michael Sean Winters: Massimo Borghesi's book explains how U.S. neoconservative Catholics have landed the U.S. church in a cul-de-sac, and how Pope Francis' "field hospital" vision can help us get back on the main road.