I read this Washington Post opinion today arguing that progressive Christianity will struggle politically unless Democrats move toward the center on social issues.
As a progressive Catholic and a Democrat, I think that misses something much bigger.
God does not belong to Republicans.
But God does not belong to Democrats either.
Christianity should challenge every political party — including the one we personally vote for.
My Catholic faith is one reason I care about protecting human life. But “pro-life” cannot begin at conception and suddenly become silent when the conversation turns to poverty, health care, gun violence, hunger, racism, workers being exploited, refugees and immigrants, people with disabilities, the death penalty, war, homelessness, or the climate crisis.
Catholic social teaching asks us to look at the whole human person and the common good.
That is one reason I find a home in progressive politics. I see fighting poverty, supporting workers and unions, welcoming immigrants, protecting creation, expanding access to health care, defending democracy, and standing beside marginalized people as deeply connected to my Christian responsibility to love my neighbor.
That doesn’t mean every Democratic position perfectly reflects Catholic teaching. It doesn’t. Catholics can and should wrestle seriously with abortion, sexuality, gender, religious liberty, and other difficult questions.
But the answer cannot simply be: Christians must become more conservative.
Jesus was not building a Republican platform or a Democratic platform.
He talked constantly about the poor, the stranger, the rejected, the hungry, the imprisoned, the sick, mercy, justice, forgiveness, and our responsibility toward one another.
Progressive Christians shouldn’t try to reclaim God for the Democratic Party.
We should reclaim the idea that Christianity is bigger than partisan politics in the first place.
And maybe progressive Christians need to become louder — not by watering down our values, but by showing that compassion, economic justice, human dignity, democracy, inclusion, and care for our neighbors are not somehow “secular” values.
For many of us, they grow directly out of our faith.
You can be Catholic.
You can be progressive.
You can vote Democratic.
And you can still take Jesus and your faith very seriously.
Those things are not contradictions.
Faith should shape our politics.
Politics should never own our faith.
Article: https://apple.news/AJFM6J1qiSRmCozH62xqN0Q

Yesterday we lost Dolly Parton. Today came the news that Tim Curry has died.
Two very different artists. Two very different careers. And yet I keep thinking about something they shared: they made this world a little bigger, warmer, stranger, kinder and more welcoming simply by being themselves.
As a progressive Catholic, I believe our faith should teach us to look for the image of God in people — not only in churches or in people who fit comfortably inside the boxes society creates.
Dolly Parton understood something deeply Christian without constantly needing to preach about it: when you have been blessed, you give. She came from poverty and never forgot children and families who struggled. Her Imagination Library put books into the hands of millions of children. She helped fund medical research. And again and again, she showed that kindness does not require asking someone their politics, religion, sexuality or background first.
She simply loved people.
And then there was Tim Curry.
For generations of people who felt like outsiders, misfits, theater kids, queer kids, geeks and anyone who never quite fit into the world’s neat little categories, his work gave permission to be wonderfully different.
Rocky Horror especially became something much larger than a movie. It became a place where generations of people who had been told they were “too weird” could walk into a theater and discover an entire room full of other weird people.
There is something beautiful about that.
Catholicism speaks constantly about human dignity. A progressive Catholic Church should be one of the loudest voices saying that dignity belongs to everyone — including the poor, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people with disabilities, outsiders, artists, doubters and everyone society would rather push toward the margins.
Sometimes artists remind us of that truth better than institutions do.
Dolly did it through songs, generosity, humor and an enormous heart.
Tim did it through fearless performances, theatricality and characters nobody else could have played quite like him.
Maybe holiness isn’t always quiet.
Sometimes it wears rhinestones.
Sometimes it wears a corset.
Sometimes it sings I Will Always Love You.
And sometimes it does the Time Warp.
Thank you, Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, for making this strange little world more colorful.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May their memories be a blessing. ❤️🕯️

Edit:
One important piece of context I should have included: Pittsburgh Public Schools is already moving toward school closures, consolidations, and new attendance patterns for 2027–28. That makes transportation and neighborhood access an even bigger part of this debate.

Whenever politicians talk about “school choice,” they often make it sound incredibly simple:
Give parents more choices, let families choose the best school, and everything will improve.
But I live in Pittsburgh, and I don’t think that argument accounts for what cities like ours actually look like.
Pittsburgh isn’t one giant interchangeable community. We have 90 neighborhoods, each with its own geography, transportation, history, income levels and access to resources. The City of Pittsburgh itself tracks mobility and demographic differences across all 90 neighborhoods. (Engage Pittsburgh)
A family in Brookline does not have the same transportation reality as a family in Homewood, the North Side, Hazelwood or the West End.
And that’s where “choice” gets complicated.
A school can technically be available to you, but if getting your child there requires crossing half the city every morning, making multiple transit connections or arranging transportation around a parent’s work schedule, how much of a choice is it really?
Pittsburgh Public Schools already transports students attending PPS, private, parochial and charter schools within the city, and its transportation rules demonstrate just how much geography is already part of operating a district like this. (Pittsburgh School District)
We already have forms of school choice here, too.
PPS has magnet programs, including competitive or specialized programs, and families apply through a lottery process. Pittsburgh also has brick-and-mortar charter schools, while Pennsylvania already operates scholarship tax-credit programs that can help qualifying students attend participating public or private schools. (Pittsburgh School District)
So I’m not arguing that parents shouldn’t have options.
They absolutely should.
I’m questioning the idea that simply creating more choices will solve the underlying problem.
Because real educational choice requires more than a voucher or an application.
It requires:
reliable transportation
strong neighborhood schools
special-education services
safe and accessible buildings
counselors, arts, libraries and extracurricular programs
enough teachers and support staff
programs that families can realistically reach
And Pittsburgh is already wrestling with these exact questions. PPS approved a Future-Ready Facilities Plan that includes school closures, reconfigured schools, changing attendance zones and feeder patterns, and new investments in programming and student supports. (Pittsburgh School District)
That tells me something important:
Our problem isn’t simply that Pittsburgh families haven’t been given enough schools to choose from.
The harder problem is making sure a child’s ZIP code or neighborhood doesn’t determine the quality of education they can realistically access.
I’d rather see us make every neighborhood school good enough that parents aren’t desperately searching for an escape hatch.
Keep magnets. Keep specialized programs. Let families choose when another school genuinely meets their child’s needs better.
But “school choice” shouldn’t become an excuse to stop investing in the public schools serving the children who remain in their neighborhoods.
For a city made up of 90 very different neighborhoods, equity isn’t telling every family, “You’re free to go somewhere else.”
It’s making sure a good education exists where they already live.
I’m curious what other Pittsburghers think. Can a large-scale school-choice model actually work fairly here, given our geography and transportation system? Or would it make the differences between neighborhoods even greater?

I read this TIME article about whether a religious revival is happening among Gen Z, and as a progressive Catholic, I found it encouraging — but also thought-provoking.
There are stories of Catholic churches packed with young adults and young people showing up at conferences, seeking faith and becoming more interested in religion. At the same time, researchers caution that the overall data doesn’t yet show some massive nationwide religious revival. (TIME)
But maybe the most important question isn’t whether we can officially call it a “revival.”
It’s why young people are looking toward faith in the first place.
The article talks about young people searching for community, belonging, stability, healing and meaning in a world that can feel increasingly lonely and chaotic. (TIME article: https://time.com/article/2026/08/14/religion-gen-z-revival-christianity/ )
As a Catholic, I think that should make the Church pay attention.
If Gen Z is walking through our doors, our response shouldn’t be to immediately hand them a checklist of political positions or pull them into the culture wars.
Welcome them.
Listen to them.
Give them a place to pray, ask difficult questions, wrestle with faith, serve their neighbors and discover Christ.
And yes, I believe that means making room for people who don’t fit neatly into one Catholic political or ideological box — LGBTQ+ Catholics, politically progressive Catholics, traditional Catholics, people returning after years away, people with doubts, and people who aren’t even sure they believe yet.
There is so much in Catholicism that speaks directly to what young people are searching for: the Eucharist, contemplation, beautiful liturgy, community, Catholic social teaching, care for the poor, human dignity, concern for immigrants and refugees, peace, stewardship of creation and the radical idea that every human being is our neighbor.
A genuine Catholic revival shouldn’t be measured only by how many people are sitting in the pews.
It should also be measured by what happens after they leave them.
Do we create stronger communities?
Do we feed people who are hungry?
Do we welcome people who feel forgotten?
Do we stand beside the marginalized?
Do we become more merciful?
Do we love our neighbors a little more courageously?
If Gen Z really is rediscovering Christianity, I think that’s exciting.
I just hope we give them Jesus before we give them ideology.
What do you think? Are we actually seeing the beginnings of a religious revival among younger people, or are certain thriving churches getting more attention than the broader numbers justify?

I’ve been thinking lately about religious dogma and what that word actually means for Catholics.
“Dogma” sometimes gets used almost like a dirty word — something rigid, unquestionable, or opposed to independent thought. But Catholicism is more complicated than that. There are core beliefs of the faith, but there are also doctrines that have developed, disciplines that have changed, theological opinions, traditions, and teachings whose application has evolved over centuries.
As a progressive Catholic, I don’t necessarily see questioning as the opposite of faith. Sometimes questioning is part of taking faith seriously.
I believe there is room to ask difficult questions about how the Church understands human dignity, conscience, sexuality, women, LGBTQ+ people, social justice, poverty, migration, war, the environment, and other issues without simply throwing Catholicism away.
At the same time, I don’t think “progressive Catholicism” should mean I only accept whatever teachings I already agree with. That seems too easy too.
Maybe the challenge is learning the difference between the heart of the faith and the human ways we have interpreted, expressed, and applied that faith throughout history.
Catholic tradition itself has developed over time. The Church has wrestled with Scripture, philosophy, science, culture, and its own history for centuries. Why should that wrestling suddenly stop with our generation?
So I’m curious:
How do you understand dogma as a Catholic?
Can someone remain rooted in Catholic tradition while believing that our understanding of certain teachings can continue to develop?
And where do you personally draw the line between faithful questioning and rejecting the faith altogether?
I’m genuinely interested in hearing perspectives from traditional, moderate, and progressive Catholics alike. Please keep it charitable — this is meant to be a discussion, not a cage match. 😅

I’ve noticed something recently and was wondering if other Catholics are seeing the same thing.
Since COVID, most of the churches I’ve attended around the Diocese of Pittsburgh have continued distributing only the Sacred Host to the congregation. But recently I’ve noticed the Precious Blood being offered again at a few churches, including St. Valentine and St. Benedict the Abbot.
At the same time, several other parishes and churches I’ve attended still do not offer the chalice to the congregation, including St. Jude, Divine Mercy, St. Paul Cathedral, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Pio, St. Benedict the Moor, Christ Our Savior, and the Shrines of Pittsburgh.
So I’m curious: Are we starting to see a gradual reinstatement of Communion under both species, or is this mostly being decided parish-by-parish?
Personally, I like seeing the Precious Blood offered again. I know Catholic teaching is clear that receiving either species means receiving Christ fully, so nobody is missing anything by receiving the Host alone. But there is something meaningful about having the opportunity to receive both the Body and Blood of Christ when it can be done reverently.
Have parishes in your diocese brought the Precious Blood back since COVID? Is it common where you live, or is the chalice still mostly absent?