Trump cheated, a failed coup: NCR’s top 10 opinions and commentary in 2021

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Supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrated on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington near the Senate entrance after violating security defenses on Jan. 6. (CNS/Reuters/Mike Theiler)

2021 continues our need to connect with each other and focus on important issues such as our overflowing commitment to democracy, the morality of getting the coronavirus vaccine, and Pope Francis ’attempt to make structural changes. at the church.

NCR opinion, commentary and editorial writers responded to all of these topics (and more).

These 10 pieces are NCR’s most read – not the most important – opinion articles and commentary of the year. They are listed in order according to the number of site visitors reading the story, with a brief summary of their contents. We posted a separate article about our wettest news yesterday.

1. How Donald Trump deceived Catholics

In early January, a week before newly elected Joe Biden was sworn in as president, NCR published this essay by Franciscan Sr. Fran Ferder, a clinical psychologist, and Fr. John Heagle, chairman of the Gospel Nonviolence Working Group for AUSCP (the Association of United States Catholic Priests).

In the essay, Ferder and Heagle said former President Donald Trump tricked many Americans, including Catholics, into voting for him because of his so-called “pro-life” stance. But, in 2017, a team of 27 mental health professionals wrote a book outlining the danger Trump posted in the U.S. and the world.

“They described an impulsive, pointless person with a history of many failed businesses,” Ferder and Heagle wrote. “This ‘become’ reality TV personality was revealed as a hedonist who only cared about his own welfare. He had a reputation for using and abusing women, borrowing money he didn’t pay and taking revenge against people he considered not honest with him.His resume suggested sociopathic narcissism.

“We elected him president of the United States.”

2. Editorial: Catholics must confess their complicity in the failed coup

In Jan. 6, a violent insurgency stormed the U.S. Capitol building, trying to prevent the formal counting of votes at the Electoral College for the legally elected next U.S. president, Joe Biden.

In the NCR editorial, which ran the next day, we pondered who was to blame for the attack, including Donald Trump, who declared election fraud non-existent and the House Republicans and senators who planned object to the results.

“But also among those to blame for yesterday’s failed uprising are more than a few leaders in our church. Catholic apologists for Trump have blood on their hands,” we wrote. “This is the culmination of what has been the beginning of this presidency – and some Catholics have remained silent, or worse, cheered it on, including some bishops, priests, some sisters, right side of the Catholic media and too many people in the pro-life movement. “

3. Why Pope Francis chose Cardinal Tobin for the Vatican appointment

In March, Pope Francis named Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, to be a member of the Congregation for Bishops, an appointment that makes perfect sense, according to NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters.

Tobin worked in the curia of the Redemptorists in Rome, where he would have known the situation of the church around the world in ways that few American bishops have. Tobin was also a Redemptorist priest, a missionary order that coincided with Francis’s urging the church to think of itself in missionary terms.

“Tobin was not only the kind of leader Francis wanted – someone close to the people, not a cultural warrior, and with a heart for the poor and marginalized – he was also truly liked by his brothers who bishop, ”Winters wrote.

4. Traditional Latin Mass advocates have proved Pope Francis right to suppress the old ceremony

“In the weeks following Pope Francis’ Traditionis Custodes, the motu proprio who gave his decision to revoke permits to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass contained in the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, there was intense wailing and gnashing of teeth of those who champion the old rite, ”NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters wrote in a column in August.

“Many of them proved why Pope Francis was right in what he did: The traditional Latin Mass became the incubator for division. The schism was in the air along with the incense.”

Winters listed some conservative Catholics who criticized the pope’s decision, and added that their reaction proves Francis made the right decision.

“The traditional Latin Mass led to a crooked ecclesiastical and, at least in America, opened up a new battle in cultural wars,” Winters wrote. “If you doubt the pope is right, you just have to listen to his critics.”

5. Catholics seeking ‘religious’ exemptions on vaccines should follow the church’s true teaching about conscience

M. Therese Lysaught, a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, argued in a comment in September that Catholics who support other Catholics requesting religious exemptions from vaccination requirements are not basing their argument on the basis of Catholic teaching on the primacy of conscience.

When Catholics argue that vaccines are “morally compromised,” they are distorting the Catholic teaching of conscience, Lysaught wrote.

This position “also ignores most of the necessary components of Catholic moral discernment – our liturgical identity, charity and the virtues, the consensus position of magisterial authority, Catholic social teaching and even the principles of Catholic bioethics,” he said. .

People raise signs against a chain-linked fence to display to drivers on Ohio State Route 8 during a protest Aug. 16 against vaccine mandates against COVID-19 at Summa Health Hospital in Akron, Ohio. (CNS/Reuters/Stephen Zenner)

6. Opposition to Francis was rooted in opposition to Vatican II

In response to Pope Francis ’speech in January to participants at a meeting of the National Catechetical Office of the Italian bishops’ conference, NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters said the mention needs attention because it shows why opposition to Francis was “rooted in the desire to return Vatican II toothpaste to a pre-concilior tube.”

“This is what we should remember: Behind the opposition to Francis is the opposition to Vatican II,” Winters wrote. “The church in Latin America where the pope came from has been the site of the most fertile theology since the council. The bishops there received the council in a way we didn’t receive in the north, and it’s time for us to listen and learn. They don’t stop to the question: What does it mean to use the preferential option for the poor? “

7. Bishops pour cold water at the most catholic inauguration in history

Following President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, president of the U.S. conference of bishops, issued a statement acknowledging that there will be areas where bishops can work with the new administration but also warned that Biden “promised to pursue certain policies that would promote moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and sex.” Gomez added: “The greatest concern is the freedom of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”

“Biden is the man of the time, and his Catholic faith is evident in the way he rose to meet the moment,” NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters wrote the next day. “The bishops may not have realized that. They may have gone sand. Most of us are very grateful that this nice and decent man is our president today.”

President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden arrived for his inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington Jan. 2021. (CNS/pool via Reuters/Win McNamee)

8. Unknown bishops take potshots of the pope

On another occasion of conservative Catholics finding ways to confront Pope Francis, NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters tried out a February First Things column written by Fran Maier, the longtime senior advisor of former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput.

Maier’s column presented the results of confidential interviews Maier conducted with 28 U.S. bishops in recent months, which mentioned, among other things, their concern “about interference in the selection process. at the level of the Roman congregation. “

Winters asked: “Does this article reflect the views of bishops as a body? Are they all, or at least most, ‘disappointed’ with the pope?”

9. Can the Catholic Church agree to change anything?

In a column in April, Phyllis Zagano discussed the long -term question: Can the Catholic Church really change? We know that the church can change, Zagano wrote, because it has, usually to maintain clerical power.

“But is there a fear that the change will cause the far right to take their money and run?” Zagano asked. “You may recall that the church leaves a lot of questions open because, as theologian Hans Küng points out, ‘it’s impossible to get some kind of consensus.’ “

10. Archbishop Chaput called Pope Francis a liar

And in October, NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters called former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput for his article in First Things, which appeared to accuse Pope Francis of lying.

Chaput seems to be responding to an article published in America magazine in which Austen Ivereigh discussed Pope Francis ’comments about EWTN, the conservative Catholic media network. But the main contention of Chaput’s article is this: “And any suggestion that EWTN is unfaithful to the Church, to the Second Vatican Council, or to the Holy See is simply vindictive and wrong.”

“Being dishonest in the church is exactly what Francis said EWTN was,” Winters said.

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