Daniel P. Horan

While there are undoubtedly bad actors in our church and world, most people strive to do the right thing, seek a life of integrity, and wish to do no harm. So how do we end up with the messes we have before us?

Faith Seeking Understanding: Thanksgiving, while typically viewed as a secular holiday, offers Christians a liminal moment to pause between the then and now, the old and new, the already and not yet.

A broader sense of synodality is about proper recognition of the place of all the baptized faithful in the prudential discernment about church decision-making and governance. It is what the church might look like at its best.

Newman's theological corpus presciently lays a foundation for the kind of discussions about and development of theology and church discipline seen as most contentious in recent months. 

Faith Seeking Understanding: In addition to the directly identifying white supremacy and engaging with key theologians in the field, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz's pastoral letter not only names the sin of racism but also names the sinners.

Faith Seeking Understanding: While media attention in the coming weeks will inevitably be preoccupied with those issues seen as most contentious and controversial at the synod, another kind of history-making shift may be underway shaping how the church understands itself and engages other traditions.

Faith Seeking Understanding: St. Francis called all creatures — and not merely those nonhuman animals we classify as sentient, but rocks and trees alike — his sisters and brothers because, in a real sense, they are.

Faith Seeking Understanding: While I agree with the intellectual and moral integrity of the consistent ethic of life principle, which upholds that every human life — born and unborn — is inherently valuable, dignified and must be protected, ​we live in a time when a more fundamental issue threatens all life.

Faith Seeking Understanding: St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean's memoir shows there is no singular point of decision in the Christian life. Rather, there is a constant need for ongoing conversion, growth and change guided by the Holy Spirit. 

Faith Seeking Understanding: In the wake of the horrific mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, it occurs to me that, when it comes to guns, the United States collectively behaves in a way that mimics an addict in denial.

Faith Seeking Understanding: It's hard enough to open oneself up to the suffering of others when the cause of the suffering is situated in civil contexts or social institutions. But what about when the cause is also division, injustice or scandal in the church?

Faith Seeking Understanding: As a church, we have generally rewarded specialization in the formation of our ordained ministers and discouraged breadth and range that might allow for a more open and creative pastoral responses. It's no wonder that church leaders struggle in responding boldly to many of today's most pressing social issues.

Faith Seeking Understanding: The dialogue being called for in the recent Vatican document on "gender theory" is a false dialogue, one that makes no provision for the risk of genuine conversation.

Faith Seeking Understanding: In the 2016 U.S. presidential election and what is now shared in common across the Atlantic in a trend toward nationalism is the use and abuse of fear.

Faith Seeking Understanding: I am writing this column beside the Sea of Galilee at a break during a Holy Land retreat that I am co-leading with Dominican Sr. Laurie Brink, who is a New Testament scholar. During my time here, I have been thinking a lot about pilgrimage and place and of their particularly theological significance.

Faith Seeking Understanding: The ever-widening gap between Trump's self-presentation and reality has returned my attention to Merton's writings on the "true self" and the "false self."

Faith Seeking Understanding: For M. Shawn Copeland, soon to retire from Boston College, being a professor of theology is not merely a career, but a profound vocation.

Faith Seeking Understanding: This is the first Good Friday after Pope Francis had the catechism revised to reassert the lasting human dignity of everyone and to state the church's determination for the abolition of capital punishment worldwide.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Professional theologians and ethicists have spent years studying and teaching in their fields. They are needed to help people — both lay and ordained — understand what it is we say we believe.

Faith Seeking Understanding: The ongoing presence and action of the Holy Spirit should be the founding principle of how we think of the church. But the actions of many church leaders suggest instead an attitude of "it's all up to me."