After hours of chaos in the nation’s capital Wednesday where President Donald Trump supporters descended upon and infiltrated the Capitol building in protest of the 2020 election, Catholic leaders across the country condemned the violence and called for peace.
In a conversation with The Tablet, Bishop Mark Spalding of Nashville took aim at the federal government as well as states that endorse capital punishment as a means of justice.
The U.S. bishops’ conference is encouraging Catholics to get a coronavirus vaccination because it’s a “moral responsibility for the common good,” even if some vaccines are connected to abortion-derived cell lines.
Bishop Thomas A. Daly of Spokane says the COVID-19 pandemic “has given us a providential opportunity to really examine why we have our Catholic schools in the midst of so much illness.” Bishop Daly chairs the Committee on Education for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced the new working group chaired by Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit in unscheduled remarks to close out last week’s U.S. Bishops meeting. As part of the statement, he said it creates a “difficult and complex” situation that the second ever Catholic president elect supports abortion rights.
When the U.S. bishops decided to continue with their annual fall meeting despite a pandemic, they took it online, shortened its length but also its scope, leaving only the most essential matters on the to-do list.And at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 2020 fall meeting, racism was part of that essential business.
A new virtual format left little room for dialogue at day one of the U.S. Bishops annual fall meeting, but for one 45-minute stretch more than a dozen bishops gave their takes on laicized ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
Following the Nov. 10 release of the Vatican’s 460-page report on former cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, some of the speculation in the media has centered on the role of St. John Paul II in McCarrick’s rise through church ranks.
Although dogged for years by rumors of sexual impropriety, Theodore E. McCarrick was able to rise up the Catholic hierarchical structure based on personal contacts, protestations of his innocence and a lack of church officials reporting and investigating accusations, according to the Vatican summary of its report on the matter.
Archbishop Gomez said he believes “at this moment in American history, Catholics have a special duty to be peacemakers, to promote fraternity and mutual trust, and to pray for a renewed spirit of true patriotism in our country.”
