Thomas Reese

As someone who believes that women have a right to birth control but also believes that government should respect people’s religious beliefs, I see this controversy as both a tragedy and a farce. If there had been goodwill on both sides, litigation would not have been necessary. In fact, each side was suspicious of the other and any kind of deal became impossible.

If we want to know what the baptism of Jesus and our own baptisms are all about, we need to look to the prophet Isaiah, from whom the Gospel writers borrow in describing Jesus’ baptism.

Signs of the Times: As the only major denomination with almost equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, the Catholic Church is in a unique position to respond to today's toxic politics.

Scientists tell us that oceans are rising. Cities will be inundated. Weather patterns will change. Millions of people will suffer. The damage we are doing to Mother Earth may be impossible to heal.

In one of the most significant appointments of his papacy, Pope Francis has chosen the Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to head the Vatican office that deals with most of the dioceses in Africa, Asia and Oceania. As prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, he will help shape the church in these territories.

The political atmosphere in our country has become so toxic that it becomes a news story when the speaker of the House says she does not hate the president.

The emotions we experience while thinking about our death tell us a lot about who we are and how much we trust God.

If you have to ask a Jesuit to straighten out your finances, you are in big trouble.

More than 1,500 students descended on Washington, D.C., this week, not for a rock concert or to demonstrate outside the impeachment hearings, but to lobby Congress on global warming and DACA, the program protecting immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives from deportation.

Global warming is an important issue but not urgent, said the leader of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Abortion, on the other hand, is their preeminent priority. 

As the U.S. bishops gather for their annual meeting in Baltimore next week, they might take a page from the Vatican’s recently ended synod on the Amazon region. 

The synod of bishops meeting in Rome voted on Oct. 26 to recommend the pope allow the ordination of married men as Catholic priests in the Amazon region.

Signs of the Times: Saving the Amazon rainforest requires action by Western nations, a Surinamese bishop attending the Catholic Church's synod on the Amazon region said, charging that the people of the Amazon cannot do it by themselves.

Signs of the Times: As the synod on the Amazon region enters its final week, the bishops who gathered here to discuss the region's challenges and make recommendations to Pope Francis will begin preparing their final report.

While the focus of the synod this month in Rome has been on the needs of the Amazon region, an American bishop at the meeting has suggested the synod can enrich the rest of the church and the world.

As the Amazonian bishops come to the end of their first week of meetings in Rome discussing the issues facing their region, they were united in condemning attacks on the rainforest and the indigenous peoples.

The first working session of the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon began on Oct. 7, with a call from a leading Latin American cardinal for new pathways in service to indigenous peoples and protection of the rainforest.

At the Mass opening the Synod on the Pan-Amazon Region, Pope Francis urged the assembled bishops to embrace "daring prudence," rather than settle for the status quo.

Catholic clergy from around the world are arriving in Rome this week for the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, which begins Oct. 6.