Two interesting articles on the Church in the USA that appear in the latest London Tablet. The first is an analysis of our recent election by Michael Sean Winters, focused on the contrasting views of the two Catholic leaders of the House. Three paragraphs that struck me:

What neither Pelosi nor Boehner will even acknowledge is that both political parties fall short of the vision of Catholic public action presented by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. There, the Pope demonstrated how Catholic concern for the dignity of the human person was the ground of both the Churchs commitment to life issues and its teachings on social justice. Catholic ethics, be they sexual or social, are rooted in Catholic anthropology and cannot be divided without doing violence to the entire approach Catholics take to the realm of politics. Applied to American Catholic political leaders, Caritas in Veritate issues a plague on both parties. ...In a widely circulated election analysis, Catholic University of America professor Steve Schneck wrote that "moderate pro-life and pro-Catholic Social Teaching candidates were defeated by currents in contemporary American political life that are pushing both the GOP [the "Grand Old Party" as the Republicans are sometimes known] and the Democrats toward their respective right and left wings. Not only do both of those wings stand in tension with the Churchs traditional teachings, but their polarisation undercuts the possibility for any real advance on the issues that are priorities for the Church." ...In Caritas in Veritate, the Pope called for moral, even anthropological, consistency. Last week, the American people voted for change. But, so long as Pelosi and Boehner are running the congressional show, neither the Pontiff nor the people are likely to get their wish. Forecasters predict increased polarisation and gridlock in Washington because the political orthodoxies of both parties have made compromise impossible and the common good a distant, unattainable goal.

The other was a piece by Hugh O'Shaughnessyon the appointment as a guest lecturer at Georgetown University of the former president of Colombia, and of reactions to it by peace-and-justice people, including some prominent Jesuits., such as Jon Sobrino and John Dear.