Michael Sean Winters

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has called Vatican II "a failure," but Pope Francis marked the 60th anniversary of the opening of the council with a homily challenging both the left and the right. Columnist Michael Sean Winters weighs in.

Columnist Michael Sean Winters worries that once Elon Musk takes over Twitter, anti-Semitic social media posts will no longer be pulled, as some recent ones by rapper Kanye West recently were.

Abortion, racism and denying election results are all moral issues facing voters this November. But columnist Michael Sean Winters wonders whether rising gas prices will sideline them all.

Columnist Michael Sean Winters on anti-synodal takes from George Weigel and Cardinal Gerhard Müller.

It's not that internal church issues aren't important, argues columnist Michael Sean Winters, but that going to the peripheries will help fix those internal issues.

After Hurricane Ian we can learn much from a town that came through relatively unscathed and from Waffle House, says columnist Michael Sean Winters.

What does the election of hard-right Giogia Meloni mean for an alliance with right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland? Or with a U.S. led in the again by Donald Trump or a Trump wannabe?

What some progressives demand is not only the right an abortion or some other procedure a Catholic hospital cannot, in conscience, perform. They demand the right to coerce that hospital into performing those procedures.

The Child Tax Credit rescued millions of children from poverty, but as it expires Dems are campaigning on other hot-button issues. That's a mistake, says columnist Michael Sean Winters. Also: Poland goes green.

Kudos to those who compiled the national synthesis for the synod, says columnist Michael Sean Winters. But there is still much more work to be done to truly embrace synodality in the church.

The neofascist tendencies of Italy's new prime minister could be a headache for Pope Francis, says columnist Michael Sean Winters. He's also worried about the Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate.

After four years of a president who rejected American leadership and alliance building, it is comforting to have a president who engages the world again, and does so with America's best national dispositions on full display.

Trump's legal troubles continue to mount, and while none of it will matter to his acolytes, it is not shock at his outrageous behavior that will doom him. It is exhaustion. People are tired of the drama he brings.

In The New York Times, David Leonhardt looks at some of the reasons that Hispanic voters are less and less likely to vote Democratic than they were just six years ago.

Catholics in the U.S. are ensnared in a political binary, but as Cardinal Michael Czerny of the Vatican dicastery for integral human development explains, church teaching about the human person can show a way forward.

Columnist Michael Sean Winters had an eye on Queen Elizabeth's funeral, and he has special praise for one of the hymns sung during it.

Conscience and Catholic Education: Theology, Administration, and Teaching brings together essays that focus broadly on issues of conscience encountered in the educational field. The essays are uneven but important.

We are now less than two months from the midterm elections. The New York Times' polling genius Nate Cohn has started to zero in on the midterm polling, and he is flashing a big yellow caution light to Democrats.

The Washington Post reports on the collapse of Russia's military in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. It is stunning, writes Michael Sean Winters, and shows how stretched the entire Russian war effort is.

"Reports." The word almost smells boring and managerial. Yet, as the synodal reports come together, if you look closely, you see that many of them are rooted in a deep spirituality, notes columnist Michael Sean Winters.