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Following are NCR reader responses to recent news articles, opinion columns and theological essays with letters that have been edited for length and clarity.
Cryptocurrency donations
The recent critique of cryptocurrency donations raises important questions about stewardship and moral responsibility (NCR, Feb. 20, 2026). It is right to urge caution. But the concern is not that the article rejects cryptocurrency outright — it is that it treats it as morally exceptional.
Christian stewardship has never required the church to avoid imperfect financial tools. Rather, it calls for discernment and faithful management. In the Parable of the Talents, the servant who buried what he was given out of fear was not commended, but corrected. The faithful response was engagement, not withdrawal.
Churches already receive complex and fluctuating assets — stocks, real estate, and business interests—that carry risk and ethical questions. These are not rejected, but stewarded responsibly. Cryptocurrency can be approached in the same way, particularly when donations are converted promptly into cash, minimizing volatility.
Concerns about illicit use and broader social impact deserve careful attention. But these concerns are not unique to digital assets. All forms of money exist within imperfect systems. The church’s task has never been to find morally pristine instruments, but to use available resources with integrity and transparency for the common good.
There is also a pastoral dimension. Many younger donors now hold wealth in digital assets. If churches are unwilling to receive such gifts, they may unintentionally limit participation in the church’s mission.
Prudence is essential. But so is perspective.
KEVIN LONG
Holualoa, Hawaii
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Just war theory
Both Michael Sean Winters and Cardinal Robert McElroy sound like the adults in a room full of war mongers in their recent invocation of the just war theory to condemn the war with Iran (NCR, March 16, 2026). They are right, of course; the conflict fails to meet any number of just war criteria, from just cause
to—as the course of the war suggests — probability of success. But in reviving the just war theory, aren’t they playing into the hands of the war makers and weapons manufacturers? Aren’t they making the implicit promise — do better in framing your war next time and we’ll give you our blessing?
Once again, just war theory puts Catholics in the morally and spiritually untenable
position of approving staggering death tolls. Long ago, Saint Pope Paul VI cried out at the UN, “War, never again!” Since then, the Catholic just peace movement, as Michael Sean Winters indicates, by emphasizing the power of nonviolence, has made real progress in re-framing the way the Church thinks about war; we were almost to the point of rejecting the just war theory altogether. To resurrect it now seems like a step backwards.
LAURIE BRANDA GAGNE
University Park, Maryland
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Opus Dei
Many thanks for reprinting the Substack story of Gareth Gore’s visit with Pope Leo XIV that included his shocking, up-to-date exposé of Opus Dei (NCR, March 17, 2026). Although Gore is not the first to alert the Holy See about the depraved nature of Opus Dei, he seems to be the first to militantly and righteously demand action to eradicate this infamous cult from beneath the church’s umbrella. Leo would do the People of God a huge favor by following Gareth’s suggestions for doing so. Clearly, the church’s shameful history of coverups no longer works. If we cannot trust the Bishop of Rome to address this issue promptly, how can we trust anything he says or does?
NANCY McGUNAGLE
Kalispell, Montana
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