Amid heightened tensions over ISIS-fueled terror attacks and anti-Muslim rhetoric, a prominent U.S. cardinal says Islam “wants to govern the world” and Americans must decide if they are going to reassert “the Christian origin of our own nation” in order to avoid that fate.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a Rome-based prelate known as an outspoken conservative and critic of Pope Francis’ reformist approach, said in an interview on July 20 that Islam is “fundamentally a form of government.”

Karen E. Park 7-21-2016
Man carries his sidearm to support the permitless carry law going into effect on July 1.

Gun violence has become so ubiquitous in the U.S. that it is changing the very way we talk about our country. The names of our cities and towns have become shorthand terms for gun death: Orlando, Newtown, Dallas, Ferguson, Baton Rouge, Columbine, Aurora.

Joe Kay 7-21-2016

At times like this, it’s good to remember that our founders valued our vast differences and set up a big government of checks and balances that would force us to compromise and cooperate. Government fails — and we fail as a nation — when people go to Washington and statehouses insistant on getting their way, without compromise.

That attitude is an un-American attitude. It goes against the heart of what makes us who we are. It makes us unravel.

the Web Editors 7-21-2016

Police shot a black man who was taking care of an autistic patient who had wandered into the street, reports the Miami Herald.

On July 18, an unnamed officer shot the caretaker, Charles Kinsey, 47, in the leg with an assault rifle. Video footage taken before the shooting shows Kinsey lying on the ground with his hands in the air, telling his autistic patient to cooperate and lie on the ground as well. Kinsey was not badly injured and is scheduled to be released from the hospital July 21.

Robert Satloff 7-21-2016

Nice, on France’s Mediterranean coast, now joins a long list of cities, on four continents, where Islamist terrorists have perpetrated gruesome attacks, mercilessly killing hundreds of innocents.

And those are just where some of the highest-profile outrages have occurred, the ones that attract headlines. The fact that millions of people, mostly other Muslims, survive under the daily brutality of violent Islamists in large parts of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Gaza, Nigeria, and elsewhere is so routine as to barely be newsworthy.

Leaning over his desk in Harare, the Zimbabwe flag’s green, red, yellow, and black stripes draped around his neck, Pastor Evan Mawarire looked into the camera and launched an uprising.

“This flag, every day that it flies, is begging for you to get involved, is begging for you to say something, is begging for you to cry out,” he told fellow Zimbabweans in the April 20 video.

John Gehring 7-20-2016

Donald Trump takes pride in rattling the GOP establishment, but he faces a major roadblock on the way to the White House.

Catholic voters, who have been key to picking the winning ticket in almost every modern election, reject Trump decisively. In 2012, President Obama won the overall Catholic vote 50 percent to 48 percent. Hillary Clinton now leads 56 percent to 39 percent, a sizable gap unlikely to close much by November.

Lisa Sharon Harper 7-20-2016

What shall we prophesy?

That restoration and repair are possible because God is — because God is love — because love intervenes.

Tom Heneghan 7-20-2016

The Russian Orthodox Church, whose boycott of a major summit of Orthodox Christian leaders in Crete last month threatened to slow down efforts to promote greater unity, has declared the meeting “an important event in the history of the conciliar process.”

The church’s synod, in its official reaction to the June 20-26 Holy and Great Council, also said the meeting could not be called “pan-Orthodox” because four of the 14 independent Orthodox member churches did not attend.