Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among American children and adolescents, with more than 48,000 lives lost every year. Yet Catholic leadership in the United States has not built a sustained response to this epidemic. Bishops consistently organize advocacy campaigns, pastoral letters, and lobbying structures around abortion. On gun violence the pattern is different: grief is expressed, prayers are offered, and then the cycle fades without long-term institutional action.
Leadership studies draw a distinction between transformational and transactional leadership. Transformational leaders inspire sustained action and courage in the face of crisis. Transactional leaders rely on symbolic gestures or one-time responses. When it comes to abortion, the bishops act in transformational ways, mobilizing structures and communities for decades. On gun violence, their leadership remains transactional, issuing statements that lack the infrastructure to support real change.
The August 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis illustrated this imbalance. Two children were killed and seventeen parishioners wounded during morning Mass. Archbishop William Lori, speaking for the U.S. bishops, offered a heartfelt statement of sorrow. Yet Catholics were left to ask where the same persistence and organized action could be found that the Church routinely brings to abortion.
To be fair, there are bishops and dioceses pointing the way forward. After the massacre in Uvalde, Cardinal Blase Cupich asked a piercing question: “What do we love more, our instruments of death or our future?” In Baltimore, parishes have organized gun buybacks. The Michigan Catholic Conference supported new laws requiring safe storage and universal background checks. After Buffalo and Uvalde, the U.S. bishops called on Congress to strengthen background checks and framed gun violence as a public health crisis. These are powerful steps. They deserve recognition. They are also far too isolated. What remains missing is the infrastructure that would make them the organizing center of Catholic public life rather than exceptions to the rule.
The partisan dynamic is impossible to ignore. Gun regulation has been coded in American politics as a Democratic issue, and bishops often justify their quiet approach by saying they must avoid appearing partisan. Yet abortion is just as politically charged, aligned squarely with Republican priorities, and that has not prevented the Church from investing decades of advocacy, money, and organizational resources into it. The difference is revealing. By choosing silence on gun violence, bishops are not avoiding partisanship, they are embracing it. They have taken the risk of aligning with one side of the political spectrum while declining to challenge the other.
This selective courage shows how American politics has shaped the Church’s public witness. The bishops claim neutrality but in practice mirror the contours of partisan debate. The result is a distorted ethic of life where political calculations determine which threats deserve urgency. Pastoral leadership cannot be measured by partisan comfort. It must be measured by the willingness to defend life consistently, even when it means confronting entrenched political interests.
You can see the imbalance in practice. Diocesan offices and Parishes routinely mobilize seminarians and parishioners to pray outside abortion clinics and those vigils have become public symbols of Catholic witness. Yet where is that same presence outside gun shows, firearms conventions, or stores that profit from the sale of weapons? Why is there courage to confront and pray for vulnerable women but not those seeking to purchase firearms designed for killing? The answer tells volumes about partisanship. The Church is comfortable showing public opposition in a setting already aligned with Republican priorities, because it reinforces rather than challenges partisan expectations. Confronting the gun industry would mean stepping into conflict with Republican-aligned interests, and so silence becomes the safer choice.
Gun violence will remain a defining test of Catholic leadership. Sympathy matters, but it is not enough. Catholics deserve leaders who demonstrate a consistent witness to life and who embody the courage required of shepherds in a time of crisis. Until that happens, silence will continue to speak louder than words. However, on this issue, we don’t need to whisper.
Editor’s Note:
I write this as someone who has a complicated love of his Catholicism. After years working in progressive politics, I converted as an adult, took time away in frustration, and have since returned. I am not a perfect Catholic, but that history makes me both hopeful and restless. Hopeful because I know the depth of Catholic teaching on life, restless because I see how unevenly it is lived out.
Further Reading
Cardinal Blase Cupich, Statement on the Massacre of Children in Uvalde, Texas (Archdiocese of Chicago, May 25, 2022)
Cardinal Cupich on Highland Park — reflection on “weapons of war” in everyday hands and pastoral prayer for the wounded (Vatican News, July 5, 2022)
Michigan Catholic Conference, Gun Safety Legislation Headed to Governor Will Help Save Lives (Press Release, March 23, 2023)
Michigan Catholic Conference, House Judiciary Committee Testimony on Gun Safety Legislation (March 1, 2023)
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Letter to Congress on Gun Violence (June 3, 2022)
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Backgrounder: A Mercy and Peacebuilding Approach to Gun Violence (January 2020)