Copy Desk Daily, Jan. 29, 2020

Our recent series on Matthew Kelly illustrated another example of the peculiarly American capitalist approach to solving the Catholic Church's problems. And today's NCR editorial says: We are wary of answers for sale.

There were two big events in the nation's capital this past weekend: The Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, March for Life converge in Washington. Sponsored by the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development of the U.S. bishops’ conference, the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering brings together activists working on a range of human dignity issues. Organizers told reporter Julie Bourbon that the aim was to find crossover with the anti-abortion cause of the March for Life, held just the day before.

That kind of consistent ethic of life is a model that has typically been neglected by the U.S. bishops over the past decades, Executive Editor Tom Roberts recounts in his NCR Connections column. The way the single-issue focus on abortion has been detrimental to the church's moral authority could not have been clearer than in this year's March for Life speaker, as Trump seals his Catholic deal. Expect those images to show up in the president's reelection campaign, Tom warns.

November's 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall had GSR columnist Sr. Judith Best hearkening back to a trip she took to Germany in 1970 and remembering sisters' courage in East Berlin.

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