Daniel P. Horan

Faith Seeking Understanding: Electing Biden and Harris is a significant starting point, but it is only the beginning of the work of healing a broken nation that has perhaps not seen such division since the end of the Civil War.

Faith Seeking Understanding: For Christians seeking to move forward toward reconciliation and peace after the 2020 election, we have to avoid cynicism, preserve memory and restore a sense of our shared humanity.

Listen: NCR's Heidi Schlumpf has joined "The Francis Effect" podcast for its new season as a co-host with Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan and David Dault. The podcast is available on NCR's site and various podcast apps.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Few Catholic leaders or public figures in the United States are talking about 2020's toll on mental health. But the Australian bishops offer an incredible contribution.

Listen: NCR's Heidi Schlumpf has joined "The Francis Effect" podcast for its new season as a co-host with Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan and David Dault. The podcast is available on NCR's site and various podcast apps.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Trump's obsession with being perceived as "manly" and "tough" has increased erratic behaviors and irresponsibility that is literally toxic, since it exposes others to a deadly disease.

Listen: NCR's Heidi Schlumpf has joined "The Francis Effect" podcast for its new season as a co-host with Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan and David Dault. The podcast will be available on NCR's site and various podcast apps.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Living like Jesus means prioritizing relationship above all else, and in many ways the Franciscan tradition has, as the pope acknowledged, shaped the focus of this social teaching.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Like priests who benefit from a large and powerful institution, police are protected by a system that treats them as a category unto themselves, shielded from criminal liability.

Listen: NCR's Heidi Schlumpf has joined "The Francis Effect" podcast for its new season as a co-host with Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan and David Dault. The podcast is available on NCR's site and various podcast apps.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Despite canon law's prohibition against political endorsements by clergy, many prelates have entered the partisan fray, resulting in increased division and confusion among the faithful.

Listen: NCR's Heidi Schlumpf has joined "The Francis Effect" podcast for its new season as a co-host with Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan and David Dault. The podcast will be available on NCR's site and various podcast apps.

Faith Seeking Understanding: News of a settlement for Flint residents poisoned by the water supply coincides with the 2020 Season of Creation, reminding us of the overlap between environmental and racial injustice.

Faith Seeking Understanding: The problem is that too many people refashion Christianity — its doctrinal teachings and moral guidance — into an idol of their own making in order to grasp a misguidedly simple and falsely clear message.

Faith Seeking Understanding: American society has long been skeptical of or outright hostile to anything that seems lazy or frivolous, but doing nothing is about reordering one's priorities, values, worldview, commitments and energies.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Over the years, I have come to see the dozens of daily benefits my perceived whiteness affords me, many of which are the ways I am spared of judgment, harassment, threats and discrimination.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Whereas over the years many white people might not have even stopped to look at or consider the symbolic significance of these public shrines to racist traitors, many people of color are regularly forced to confront again the grotesque history of a country that denied them of their very humanity. 

Faith Seeking Understanding: The phrase "gender ideology" is used in both religious and secular contexts, but I am most interested in how it is deployed in Catholic circles to cause grave harm to people already made vulnerable in an unjust society. 

Faith Seeking Understanding: The urgency of the moment demands honesty; therefore I will be blunt: The 2018 U.S. bishops' "Open Wide Our Hearts" pastoral letter on racism has proven to be a worthless statement.

Faith Seeking Understanding: If you don't like the current reality of widespread illness, death, economic collapse and rolling lockdowns, then you should really direct your energies toward combating climate change.