Welcome to another week of searching for wisdom. Please forgive some crude language, election related. Ponder the Mideast violence and consider the call to Gospel Non-Violence. Skim the headlines, but please stop to read the personal reflection of a priest’s death-sentence ministry. As fake Catholic news seeks to corrupt our Church, we lead off with reliable news sources.
Religious news
A reminder: Updated news reporting is available at Religion News Service, The Guardian, Reuters and the Associated Press.
Reporting and commentary from particular viewpoints is available from National Catholic Reporter and National Catholic Register.
Beware of fake Catholic news, detailed in this report.
Subscribe to America, Commonweal, Today’s America Catholic and Black Catholic Messenger, to name a few.
Dilexit nos
‘He Loved Us’: Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Read the full text of Dilexit nos.
Vatican News, straight from the Vatican, is available and frequently updated.
Keeping up with the Synod.
Michael Centore reports day by day on the goings on. Here’s a sample of what he reported last week on October 25. To get a full list of what is available, here is the home page.
Election Section
Exposing soft Christian nationalism: An exploration of how soft Christian nationalism, hiding within the broader sympathies of everyday Americans, fuels support for authoritarian leaders and political violence. From Religion News service.
Post-election preparation: Faith groups use election scenarios to prepare spiritually, mentally for what’s next. From Religion News Service.
The ‘Courage Tour’: Baptist News Global reports that GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s Sept. 28 appearance during a Pennsylvania stop on Lance Wallnau’s “Courage Tour” may have broken nonprofit tax law. he Courage Tour is a get-out-the-vote road show featuring Christian nationalist historians (David and Tim Barton), far-right GOP officials (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) and election deniers (Mark Finchem) that is visiting swing states that will decide who wins the 2024 election.
The immigration issue: 100 years after the Immigration Act, we’re reaping what we’ve sown. This year is the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Immigration Act, which limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origin quotas. The quotas provided immigration visas to 2% of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia.
Blunt reaction to Tucker Carlson, OPINION: The headline comment from a writer for Baptist News Global is blunt: “Just when you think the lies and threats from MAGA world can’t get any scarier, Tucker Carlson shows up.” Writer Mark Wingfield prays, “But dear God in heaven, save us from Tucker Carlson’s parenting advice.”
Fake Catholic News: Dioceses slam fake Catholic newspapers seen as part of ‘pink slime’ election ploy. ProPublica observed that a print version of the Wisconsin Catholic Tribune actively sought to “undermine Vice President Kamala Harris and prop up former President Donald Trump.”
Is Kamala anti-Catholic? Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance accused Vice President Kamala Harris of being prejudiced against Catholics in an op-ed published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — the largest newspaper in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. From National Catholic register. At Black Catholic Messenger, Editor Nate Tinner-Williams says “she has long taken heat for questioning conservative Catholic values, but her full record complicates blanket claims of anti-Catholicism.”
Endorsing Trump: In one of his most explicit endorsements of Donald Trump’s campaign to date, Franklin Graham spoke at a Trump rally in Concord, N.C., Oct. 21 and prayed aloud to God to cause Trump to win the election. Trump told the crowd he would “create a new federal task force on finding anti-Christian bias, that will begin immediately.”
Trump Staff report: What former staff members are saying: ‘Fascist’, ‘conman’, ‘predator’, ‘cheat’: what 11 former Trump staffers say about him now. From John Kelly to Mike Pence, top figures from the Trump administration have warned of his unfitness to be president.
Bridging the ideological divide: It isn’t easy to lower the temperature of our political discourse. But there are people working to help us have better conversations. The search for such wisdom comes from the Christian Century.
Democrats pessimistic, GOP confident: Polls suggest Harris and Trump still neck-and-neck, but Democrats are pessimistic and Republicans confident. Taken at face value, the figures are no disaster for Harris and hardly represent a triumph for Trump. If they match the outcome on 5 November, Harris will win a majority of votes in the electoral college.
Sixty years after the unwinding of Jim Crow: An in-depth report, with photos, from Reuters. It’s almost at the edge of living memory: President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act in July 1964, urging Americans to “close the springs of racial poison.” It was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow, the often brutally enforced web of racist laws and practices born in the South to subjugate Black Americans.
NCR Editorial: The Al Smith dinner disappointment: Cardinal Dolan’s ‘Al Smith dinner’ disappointment is misdirected, says an editorial in National Catholic Reporter. The sin here is not that Kamala Harris had the good sense to reply, “No thank you, I’m previously engaged.” The real scandal is that the good Catholic cardinal of the great city of New York would not have the courage to say, this year, that the current Republican candidate is a walking example of so much the Catholic Church finds repugnant in today’s politics that he would suspend the normal invitations.
Chicken-sh*t: The Washington Post says it will not endorse candidate for first time in 30 years. Staffers and some readers are upset. Comments include that was a chicken-sh*t decision.
Poop monument: A new temporary bronze installation depicting a pile of feces on Nancy Pelosi’s desk was erected in Washington DC recently, across from the US Capitol, appearing to satirically “honor” the people behind the January 6 insurrection. “This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election,” the plaque under the statue reads. From the Guardian.
Call for Mideast ceasefire, nonviolence
More than 150 NGOs Call for a Ceasefire in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel. The report comes from Pax Christi International. The Catholic Nonviolence Initiative (CNI) is dedicated to promoting active nonviolence as a core Gospel principle. “Affirmed through papal and episcopal statements, theological research, and the lived experiences of Catholics worldwide, nonviolence is more than the absence of violence—it is a dynamic and courageous way of life.”
Pro-Life
OPINION AUSCP member Father Larry Dowling offers his view on the question: Who is really more pro-life, Republicans or Democrats?
PERSONAL REFLECTION AUSCP member Father Gerry Kleba in St. Louis offers a personal account of ministering to a prisoner sentenced to death—and duly executed. Kleba begins with a account of his own medical death sentence that was not carried out.
OPINION A writer in Today’s American Catholic offers his opinion that president Biden should commute the death sentences of all federal prisoners. Such mass action is not unprecedented, as demonstrated in several states
Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, father of liberation theology, dead at 96
Once accused of ties to Marxism, the Peruvian Catholic priest is regarded as one of the most influential religious thinkers of the 20th century. From Black Catholic Messenger.
The whole Black self
Bringing the whole Black self: Biblical eunuchs and intersex identity. Writer Rana Irby on her own experience as a Catholic sexual minority, and finds new meaning in the stories of two often overlooked Biblical figures.
Youth ministry, youth ministering
Julian DeShazier writes, “Occasionally, a church will ask me to come help them with what I will call their youth problem: they are aging rapidly (or at the pace we all age, I guess), they struggle to attract young people, and they have a lot of passion for younger generations but not a lot of skill. DeShazier writes in Christian Century, the problem “is more centrally about a lack of relationship, a lack of desire to be in relationship, and an inability to treat youth as our equals (or as better than us, as Jesus suggests in Mark 10:13–16).
All Saints Day
Niveen Ibrahim Sarras is pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Neenah, Wisconsin, and an Old Testament scholar. He writes, “the assigned reading from Isaiah embodies key themes for All Saints’ Day: hope, resurrection, and divine triumph over death. It vividly portrays God swallowing up death and wiping away tears, encapsulating belief in eternal life and the unity of all believers. It provides solace to those grieving the loss of loved ones and reaffirms the church’s faith in God’s promises, rendering it an appropriate scripture for remembering our departed saints.” From Christian Century
Is climate change lighting a fuse under Iceland’s volcanoes?
Scientists are racing to find out whether the rapid retreat of glaciers could drive a surge in eruptions as magma builds under the island nation — and if so, whether the same might occur at ice-covered volcanoes around the world, putting many lives at risk.
Movie Review: Conclave
Laced with the poignancy of a homily and unfolding with the nail-biting intensity of a whodunit, the most miraculous achievement about Edward Berger’s “Conclave” is how it bridges its pulpy thrills with its spiritual commentary. From National Catholic Reporter.
‘Cathenomics’
AUSCP member Bob Stewart recommends a book by Anthony Annett, as reviewed last year by Michael Sean Winters, and headlined, “Annett’s ‘Cathonomics’ should be required reading in Catholic business schools.” Winters says “Economist Anthony Annett has delivered a book that should be required reading not only for those of us who have long been interested in Catholic social doctrine, but for anyone who is serious about bringing their Catholic faith to bear on decisions relating to public life.”
The Religion News Quiz
It’s trivia time, from Religion News Service. Dive into our weekly quiz for your dose of fun and knowledge.
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