Another Battle Between the Catholic Church and the Trump Administration

Several winters ago, a few weeks before Christmas, I went to confession.

The parish close to work was hosting a reconciliation service, meant to prepare the faithful to celebrate the birth of Christ.

A dozen or so priests were scattered across the cathedral.

Penitents lined the aisles.

Whispers of contrition and pardon filled the air.

The Catholic Church counsels believers to seek confession regularly—at the very least, once a year.

I hadn’t been back in a few.

So in addition to feeling spiritually unmoored, I was worried about how the priest would react to hearing about my hiatus.

But when I told him, he simply smiled and said, “Welcome back.” His response put me at ease then, and it helped change how I approach the sacrament now: less as a nerve-racking ordeal, more as a moment of mercy.

Sacraments such as confession are central to Catholicism.

Through them, the Church teaches that simple actions—having a conversation with a priest, eating bread and drinking wine—are, with grace, tangible encounters with God.

For the past year, the Trump administration has been making it harder for Catholics at migrant-detention centers to have those encounters.

The most recent example came to light this month, when the Archdiocese of St.

Louis filed a federal lawsuit over the visitation policy at Saint Genevieve County Jail in eastern Missouri.