Our tradition, from the heart of the gospel to the deeply established Catholic social justice tradition it inspired, cries out for religious resistance to the Trump project. Any hint of complicity with it is a betrayal of that tradition.
Catholics need to speak up for press freedom. As Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray put it in 1963: "The freedom of the press to inform is nothing really but the other side of the rights of the people to be informed."
The leaders of the Society of St. Pius X made decisions that carry major implications. Their actions will need to be unpacked, and in some cases, undone, if the group seeks to have unity with the Catholic Church.
The question we need to pose this July Fourth, one that previous generations of Americans have had to pose and answer, is this: What are we celebrating?
"Magnifica Humanitas is ultimately asking for one very simple, yet very difficult result: conversion. And Leo is not directing his message only to tech giants, think tanks or legislatures. He wants conversion from us."
In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV has spoken about war, peace, technology and human dignity with the clarity this moment demands. Catholics should now ask what it means to say that just war theory is "outdated."
The event was another step by religious and political extremists intent on destroying the wall that separates church and state as well as the constitutional guarantees of freedom of – and from — religion.
The Catholic Church is not a static entity fully and perfectly formed, but our hope is that it doesn't take another 500 years to acknowledge the realities of the LGBTQ+ community.
