Tom Roberts

Listen: The much smaller and aging corps of women religious may suggest that this way of religious life is over. "Wrong," says Sr. Joan Chittister, in episode 3 of her podcast, "Risking the Questions."
 

Listen: Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister has a reputation as one who dares to ask big, bold questions. Explore them with her in this podcast conversation with her friend and biographer, former NCR editor Tom Roberts.

Maybe Busch is as exhausted as the rest of us with the tensions and divisions in the U.S. church. But whatever the cost of the fancy dinners, it is a pittance compared to the money he has invested in divisive politics.

Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision by Diane Winston is a measured and meticulously detailed account of the Reagan era and its significance for today.

For Jewish Israeli academic Neve Gordon, "winning" is an impossible end to the invasion of Gaza, and the Israel-Hamas war is but the latest and grimmest evidence of a doomed strategy.

"Provocative pop-ups like Catholics for Catholics are ecclesiastical equivalents of a financial scam," writes Tom Roberts. "Don't give away the password to your spiritual account." 

The inauguration of anti-corruption reformer Bernardo Arévalo as president of Guatemala comes after decades of struggle to elevate the country's marginalized, especially women and the Indigenous population. 

Archbishop Alexander Sample has barred Mass from a Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical venture that has been underway and allowed for nearly 40 years. Amid Catholic questions about authority, Sample's ban is distressingly archaic.

For Christians, the search for our moral bearings amid the horrific violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may lie not so much in a conclusive statement of right and wrong. It may, instead, lie in encounter.

I am no longer surprised at Gramick's resilience, her faith, her persistence, her endurance, her generosity, her capacity to absorb institutional assaults and remain hopeful. A prophetic talk in 1999 exemplified that.

For Spirit Catholic Community in Minneapolis, holding true to tradition doesn't mean mere imitation. Are such independent communities simply outside the fold? Or could they teach the Roman Catholic Church a thing or two?

Formed in Cleveland after a parish closing in 2010, the Community of St. Peter continues to work out matters of theology and practice, including recently considering: What about the Eucharist? Who will say the words?

When Catholics from Corpus Christi Parish in Rochester, New York, began Spiritus Christi in the late '90s, Myra Brown was among them. Today, she is the independent eucharistic community's ordained pastor.

This is no longer your grandmother's Catholic Church, but one that is increasingly multicultural and non-European, with fewer ordained priests every year. Part 2 of a 5-part series on the Catholic diaspora.

Former Catholics are everywhere. This diaspora, in differing degrees detached from institutional Roman Catholicism, often takes shape in communities that still claim the name Catholic. Part 1 of a 5-part series.

President Joe Biden's recent decision to send Ukraine cluster bombs has begun to erode the moral high ground for U.S. involvement in the conflict with Russia, writes former NCR editor Tom Roberts.

Money, not religion, is the motivating issue of the Catholic right, according to Mary Jo McConahay's new book. Former NCR editor Tom Roberts' review says the book does U.S. Catholicism a great service.

Appreciation: Reporter Patricia Lefevere was an editor's dream, ready to go anywhere on a moment's notice and eager to talk to as many people as she could to get the story, remembers retired NCR editor Tom Roberts.

Rather than continue to define itself by a few culture war issues, the U.S. church should follow Cardinal McElroy's lead in moving nonviolence to the center of Catholic teaching on war and peace, says Tom Roberts.

Synodality is an empty exercise unless true reform of the hierarchy comes from the top, says former NCR editor Tom Roberts.