Sightings Articles
The Cardinal and His Popes
The tension between Cardinal Burke and Pope Francis offers a window into the state of Roman Catholicism in the world and American religion....
December 13, 2023
Papal Fallibility
Commentary prompted by the recent death of emeritus Pope Benedict XVI unsurprisingly indexes the usual binaries of sensationalized speculation. ...
January 4, 2023
Reckoning with Re-education: Christianity’s Role in Native American Boarding Schools
American Christians must reckon with colonial history and cooperate with US government's “Road to Healing" initiative....
July 6, 2022
The Irony of Facebook
Ironically, social media sites draw upon our natural desire to have friends but they can make it more difficult to truly connect....
November 4, 2021
Pope Francis And The Jewish Law (Torah)
Pope Francis accepts Vatican II's Nostra Aetate, but has yet to fully extricate himself from two millennia's teachings of contempt ...
October 14, 2021
Catholicism and its Disconnects
The most recent Papal encyclical highlights longstanding fault lines in contemporary Catholicism...
November 16, 2020
Like Sand through the Hourglass
So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance—like the sand of the sea—that he stopped measuring it; it was beyond measure....
November 29, 2018
Really Big Sins
“This sounds like a flip answer,” said Lutheran Pastor Jan Erickson-Pearson, “but why does [clerical sexual abuse] still happen? Sin.” That was in 2002, but headlines still on occasion use the same three-letter theological word to explain the phenome...
October 8, 2018
Apologies to Native People
One would expect a headline beginning “A Pope Given to Apologies…” to be followed by a journalistic story which is likely to quicken the interest of readers. Pope Francis has made many headlines over stories which focus on the recipients of such apol...
April 30, 2018
Papal Polarities
“Will Pope Francis Cause a Schism in the Catholic Church?” That headline in The New Yorker (April 16) is subheaded: “In his new book, ‘To Change the Church,’ the Times columnist Ross Douthat critiques the Pontiff.” Such an opener requires some backgr...
April 16, 2018