Bishop George L. Thomas said he would not ask priests to police the Communion line but asked pro-choice politicians to voluntarily “refrain from the reception of Holy Communion while holding public office.”

With tens of thousands of anti-abortion protesters gathered for the annual March for Life, Catholics for Choice projected pro-abortion messages on the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Catholics uncomfortable with a synodal model of the church, Cardinal Tobin said, may be put off by the messiness dialogue often unearths. But, he said, refusing to live with tension can be a form of heresy.

The new policy instructs priests who currently celebrate a form of the Mass, sometimes called the Latin Mass or Tridentine Mass, which was supplanted with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, to request permission from the archbishop if they wish to continue using the extraordinary form.

“God is not in the devastation. He’s not in the destruction. He was not in the storm,” said the director of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Owensboro, Ky. “But he’s in the response, and that’s where we are.”

A Reflection for the Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent

Michael Rozier, S.J., said that the archbishop’s claim that his “good” immune system exempts him from needing a vaccine is simply out of touch with science.

The four dioceses in Iowa are partnering with Catholic Charities to launch a multimedia campaign aimed at convincing Catholics and other Iowans to get vaccinated to help slow the spread of Covid-19.

After months of speculation that the document could offer guidance to empower individual bishops to deny Communion to pro-choice politicians, the document only obliquely references Catholics in public life.

They were intent on responding with mercy to a crisis that at the time showed no signs of slowing.