Religion News Service

Our generation is frustrated with U.S. Catholic and civic leaders who do not seem to grasp the gravity of our crisis and are unwilling to enact church teaching.

As anxiety over the climate and environmental degradation rises, a scholar argues that teachings from religion and spirituality need to inform discussions on sustainability.

The docuseries is a reminder West's complicated relationship with Christianity reaches back further than 'Jesus Is King' and his recent elaborate Sunday Service events.

Pope Francis has asked us to pray for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday, a day of mandatory fast and abstinence in the Catholic Church. I intend to expand that into a Lent of praying for peace, justice and ecological healing.

Phyllis Zagano: Three Arizona men, congressional candidate Ron Watkins, Senate primary candidate Jim Lamon and Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted, are causing a lot of headshaking in the Grand Canyon State and beyond.

A new online exhibit featuring portraits of Black Muslims launched Feb. 2. Captured in dramatic lighting and paired with audio clips, the portraits highlight the beauty and diversity within the Black Muslim experience.

Carmen Santiago Alonso showed that 'an Indigenous church and the church with a feminine spirit is possible,' said a Catholic priest at her funeral.

My difficulties with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger began after I became editor of America Magazine. Within a couple of years, Ratzinger, through the Jesuit superior general in Rome, was signaling his unhappiness with the magazine. 

Participants at contentious school board meetings about teaching history and mask mandates should take a lesson from Bible scholars: There are many voices with stories to share.

The spiritual idea of a more perfect union is in jeopardy. How we respond to our nation's brokenness is our challenge, and faith leaders are among those most equipped to take up the call to engagement and healing.

Abune Antonios, a confined Eritrean Orthodox Church Patriarch and the longest-serving prisoner of conscience in the Horn of Africa, died on Feb. 9 at the age of 94.

Thomas Reese: Ever since he was elected pope, Pope Francis has been trying to reform the Vatican Curia, the bureaucracy that is supposed to help the pope in his ministry to the universal church. He has had only limited success.

To learn his new role, Smith connected with the Catholic Labor Network, a nonprofit that promotes the cause of workers and Catholic social teaching in labor unions and parishes. 

While borrowing Catholic tropes to take whacks at the church is "nothing new," he noted, others have done it better.

"I agree online church is an intriguing idea to include families and individuals affected by disability," I said, leaning back in my chair. "But I don't think it can work."

Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, has become well-known for challenging advocates for abortion rights and those who want to make the COVID-19 vaccines mandatory. But last month, he took a step that defied usual protocol: He challenged his fellow bishops.

Thomas Reese: Too many Catholic prelates clearly failed when they put the themselves, their priests or the institution ahead of the lives of children. How badly they sinned, I will leave to God, but there is no doubt that they need to apologize.

The U.S. Catholic bishops are frequently at odds with President Joe Biden, the second Catholic president in U.S. history. They unite with Republicans and evangelical leaders in fighting him on abortion and the application of LGBTQ rights to religious institutions. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not hesitate to acknowledge Biden’s win. 

Book interview: Susan Dunlap holds a weekly prayer service at a shelter for people without homes. Her book Shelter Theology describes their spiritual lives. Dunlap speaks about her ministry and her book in this interview.

The liberal group Catholics for Choice staged a protest outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception the evening of Jan. 20, projecting messages in support of abortion rights onto the building's walls as an anti-abortion vigil was in progress inside.