Tom Roberts is NCR executive editor. Tom was NCR editor from 2000-2008. He is the author of The Emerging Catholic Church: A Community's Search for Itself (2011) and Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith (2015), both published by Orbis Books.
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Tom Roberts
Blog
Bishops must look within their own culture
NCR Connections: Clergy culture or clerical culture are quickly becoming well-worn descriptions of an entity that previously went by the more reverential term "priesthood."
Blog
A long, difficult grind toward reform
NCR Connections: I would often wonder in the past when the church would turn some corner of realization and figure out how to deal with the crisis. The awareness I slowly came to is that no corner exists around which is some magical, instant conversion.
Blog
'Nuns and Nones': An energizing and hopeful story
NCR Connections: It is difficult to not see grand possibilities in this meeting of unlikely communities, ill-defined as the one might be. It is early in their meeting, but the nuns and "nones" seem to be embarking on an organic exploration of community, contemplation, spirituality.
For Catholics in the church's 'middle,' patience has run out
"The patience of the people of God is exhausted with the episcopal and clerical culture that puts itself first," said Georgetown University's John Carr after a Leadership Roundtable meeting on the clergy sex abuse crisis.