Ministry

“Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and the Catholic Church,” an ambitious podcast created and hosted by America’s national correspondent, Michael J. O’Loughlin, premiers Dec. 1.

We should be fearless in making clear that tolerating clergy sexual abuse stands in total contradiction to the core of the Gospel message.

Asked in 1986 to describe himself, Fred Rogers listed off a long catalog of descriptors, including performer and television producer, but he concluded with “a husband and a father. And I am a minister.”

Pope Francis has criticized clerics who are “far from the people.” One solution, writes Stacey Noem of the University of Notre Dame, is to better integrate candidates for the priesthood with lay students.

Creating an Amazonian-rite liturgy and new ministries for laypeople, including the ordination of women deacons, are some of the recurring proposals made by small groups at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.

In rural America, shrinking parishes have to share priests. That’s nothing to fear.