Common wisdom is to never predict the unpredictable. As we assemble our selection of articles and commentaries for this week, Tuesday voters in Georgia are selecting their Senators, and Wednesday the U.S. Senate hears the states’ reports of votes from the Electoral College. We offer Catholic perspectives on the election news from this busy political week.
Advice for this week
On January 6, the traditional date of observance of the Epiphany, we offer a a reflective commentary by Jaime L. Waters from America Magazine: “A transition of power is coming. The magi show us how to resist corrupt leadership.”
Walt Jagela, a priest-member of the AUSCP from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, offers his reflection on our ministry as a people of God in the time of Covid. He says in part,
If we are to love and minister among the people, we must wake up the love within our hearts and not simply obey a command. Obedience is usually about ‘cleaning up,’ love is about waking up. It is time to Wake Up!”
His reflection is headlined, “In our Totality: A Pastoral Reflection.” You can read Jagela’s piece, and other insightful and thought-provoking content, on the AUSCP blog.
Expectations for this year
Despite the tumult, Joseph Biden will be inaugurated on January 20. The editorial staff at National Catholic Reporter have advice for Biden’s first 100 days. “Building our common future: It’s what the United States, indeed, the entire world needs right now.”
Even once the ugly transition is over, Michael Sean Winters at NCR is confident of his prediction for 2021:
The Trump saga will continue through most of the year as a sideshow, a fascinating sideshow to be sure, but a sideshow nonetheless.”
At Religion News Service, reporters offer their own expectations for what they will be covering in 2021. A few highlights:
- RNS Reporter Jack Jenkins: “I expect the relationship between Biden and some American bishops to be an active — and possibly heated — negotiation throughout his first term.”
- RNS Reporter Claire Giangravé: Biden and Pope Francis “share similar views on the environment, race and immigration, and some Catholic observers wonder how and whether their synergy will play into U.S. policy.”
- RNS Reporter Emily McFarlan-Miller: “The Trump administration’s cuts to the number of refugees it would accept direly impacted the programs, largely run by faith-based organizations, that settle refugees in the United States. Already, Biden has said he plans to return refugee admissions to where they were. I will be tracking how religious organizations and volunteers reassemble an infrastructure for taking in the expanded numbers.”
Demographics for this Congress
Finally, RNS also takes a look at the 117th Congress, which is unlike America as a whole: It is overwhelmingly Christian and heavily Protestant.