Tom Roberts

National Catholic Reporter was named "best national newspaper" by the Catholic Press Association in its 2019 awards competition. The citation was one of 15 received in the newspaper awards category for reporting, commentary and use of graphics.

NCR Connections: California Catholic initiative points to new ways of engaging with worrisome cultural trends; and the decadeslong, slow-moving implosion of clericalism is accelerating.

NCR Connections: We have a new news editor at NCR, but you already know him; looking back to our first use of "clerical culture" in our pages; changes are coming to the Roman Curia; Global Sisters Report's win on covering a meeting of needs and fulfillment

NCR Connections: Vulnerability, properly understood, is precisely what members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy need to embrace as a strength, argues Fr. James Keenan.

NCR Connections: Neither Call to Action nor religious life is what it once was. The persistent question is "What's next?" The answer may be new forms that are authentic, holy and vibrant.

NCR Connections: Will he or won't he? That's the question being asked in some circles as the date approaches for the pope's appearance at this year's May 6-10 meeting of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), the leaders of the world's congregations of Catholic women religious.

NCR Connections: Distractions abound, but we hope, amid all the noise, to help focus attention on the key issue of the day — the Earth — upon which all else depends. Reaction to the appointment of Wilton Gregory as archbishop of Washington from Fr. Patrick Smith, pastor of D.C.'s St. Augustine Church.

In what he termed "a moment fraught with challenges," the new leader of the Archdiocese of Washington, in his first public appearance here April 4, repeatedly pledged to be honest with his flock.

NCR Connections: We on the outside of hierarchical culture for years have used a phrase to express the central issue: "They don't get it." Which morphed into: "How can it go on this long, and they still don't get it?"

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." 

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. 

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.

"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.

NCR Connections: Humility is about as counter-cultural as one might get given the zero-sum nature of our politics and the culture-war approach many take toward faith. It's win or lose, victory or humiliation.

NCR Today: Help us to keep tracking the walk of faith. Reporting leads everything we do at NCR, and we are able to do that only because of your support.

The talks delivered to the U.S. bishops contain only passing reference to the sex abuse scandal that was the reason behind the unusual retreat, suggested by Pope Francis, and the omission was intentional.

There is another reality within the Catholic universe that, while existing beneath the headlines of the day, is a far more compelling reason for believing there's something in the heart of the Gospel that the world desperately needs, hierarchy or not.

Recent disclosures are not a sign the episcopacy suddenly became aware of how utterly corrupt its culture had become. They are more a measure of how great the pressure from the outside has become.

As evolution occurs in the natural world through the cracking of rigid rocks, in the church it is occurring through the upheaval of ecclesial systems. What can we find under the growing rubble heap?

With all of the dualistic face-offs Catholics are engaged in, we wondered if there was a third party who could join our dance to change the dynamic. So we asked three Jewish writers what value they see in Catholic thought, art and ministry, even amid the tensions and embarrassing scandals within our community.