Tom Roberts

NCR Connections: "What can we do?" is a question we at NCR most encounter, if "they" at the top don't want to do anything and don't want you to do anything. But what if one of "them" is asking the same question?

For over four decades, Jason Berry has offered readers a mix of his intense examination of the ugliest side of Catholic reality and the soul-restoring gumbo of Louisiana life, particularly his hometown New Orleans.

NCR Connections: Through five years of reporting, NCR makes the case that something unusual has developed in the church in the U.S., influencing the conversation on Catholic social teaching and economics.

NCR Connections: The pope changed the metaphor for the Catholic community from maintaining borders to a community on a journey, with the work of the individual more a matter of accompaniment than judgment.

NCR Connections: She was a wonderful public Catholic, someone for whom faith was so obviously an influence in her relentless pursuit of the truth but also in her broad embrace of humanity.

Comparing the task facing the church to the Herculean labor of cleaning the Augean stables, Collins said she believes significant change can occur only with continuous pressure "by lay people who love the church."

In a recent talk, Fr. Bryan Massingale argues that the deepest problem faced by LGBTQI Catholics — the one that causes us the most pain, alienation, and self-estrangement — is that they've been told a false story about God and have been given false images of God. 

When Pope Francis announced 13 new cardinals this week, the name that really jumped out at me was Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, with whom I spent a day during a reporting trip to Guatemala in 2013.

NCR Connections: I'll give pollsters a break in the case where they were asking Catholics about the Eucharist and the real presence. This isn't "Do you like Donald or Hillary?" Yet the reality is far more complex and genuinely edifying.

NCR Connections: The Theology en la Plaza essay "Hate is not welcome aquí" is the plea of four writers that we look carefully and acknowledge the depth of what is occurring all around us.

NCR Connections: We live constantly, don't we, in that tension between authority and charism, between exuberant freedom and institutional necessities, between Francis at the moment of conversion and the Franciscan reality as it has played out over centuries.

National Catholic Reporter was named "best national newspaper" by the Catholic Press Association in its 2019 awards competition. The citation was one of 15 received in the newspaper awards category for reporting, commentary and use of graphics.

NCR Connections: California Catholic initiative points to new ways of engaging with worrisome cultural trends; and the decadeslong, slow-moving implosion of clericalism is accelerating.

NCR Connections: We have a new news editor at NCR, but you already know him; looking back to our first use of "clerical culture" in our pages; changes are coming to the Roman Curia; Global Sisters Report's win on covering a meeting of needs and fulfillment

NCR Connections: Vulnerability, properly understood, is precisely what members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy need to embrace as a strength, argues Fr. James Keenan.

NCR Connections: Neither Call to Action nor religious life is what it once was. The persistent question is "What's next?" The answer may be new forms that are authentic, holy and vibrant.

NCR Connections: Will he or won't he? That's the question being asked in some circles as the date approaches for the pope's appearance at this year's May 6-10 meeting of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), the leaders of the world's congregations of Catholic women religious.

NCR Connections: Distractions abound, but we hope, amid all the noise, to help focus attention on the key issue of the day — the Earth — upon which all else depends. Reaction to the appointment of Wilton Gregory as archbishop of Washington from Fr. Patrick Smith, pastor of D.C.'s St. Augustine Church.

In what he termed "a moment fraught with challenges," the new leader of the Archdiocese of Washington, in his first public appearance here April 4, repeatedly pledged to be honest with his flock.

NCR Connections: We on the outside of hierarchical culture for years have used a phrase to express the central issue: "They don't get it." Which morphed into: "How can it go on this long, and they still don't get it?"