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Some 70 million US citizens are Roman Catholics, about 22 per cent of the total population. In the 2020 elections the Catholic vote was split half and half between Trump and Biden, but only 44 per cent of white Catholics voted for Biden. Some 20 million Americans identify as Latino Catholics (about 55 per cent of the overall Hispanic population) and of these Hispanic Catholics the vote was 67 per cent for Biden, 26 per cent for Trump. Thanks to voter registration activists such as Stacey Abrams and Black Lives Matter, the black vote, especially in states like Georgia, came out in force. It was even more pro-Biden than the Hispanic (polls indicated that in some states 90 per cent of black female votes were going to Biden). American voters are racially split and the Biden presidency relies on minority voter turnout.

These figures alone illustrate the problem for a white Catholic President who asserts his Catholic identity. Ethnicity and origins play an important role in determining voting behaviour, but three other features of the contemporary USA give Biden cause for concern. The first is that as a Catholic President he must position himself in relation to national politics riven by culture wars, turbo-charged by the Republican Party. The Tea Party movement, with its mixture of Right-wing populism, shrink-the-federal state, anti-Washington activism plus anti-immigrant policies, emerged in 2009. Trumps drive for white supremacy, support for racist voter suppression, and rhetorical championing of favourite evangelical Christian themes, particularly opposition to abortion laws and same-sex marriage, made these goals seem politically achievable, but only by the Republican Party.

The second concern for a Catholic President is that the culture wars have seeped into the US Catholic Conference of Bishops. The American Church was already polarised between a strict traditionalist social conservatism with an in-built bias towards Republican politics, even in its Trump extremes, and a liberalism committed to social justice, at ease in the Democratic Party. Biden faces, and has always faced, strictures from a minority of conservative bishops about his political position on abortion and to a lesser degree his attitude towards gay and divorced people receiving the Eucharist. Obviously the President doesnt believe what we believe about the sacredness of human life, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, head of the Catholic bishops Pro-Life Committee told The Atlantic. We can safely assume that he was not referring to President Trumps acceleration of the use of the death penalty during his last days in office.

The Democratic Party does not pick radicals for their presidential candidates; that is why they rejected Bernie Sanders and chose the centrist Biden. Anyone who read Pope Franciss encyclical Fratelli Tutti would see that the pontiff is politically a prophetic radical thinker, who has more in common with Bernie Sanders than the President. But the Republicans perceive Biden as an ally of Pope Francis, who is himself under fire, and they have succeeded in placing the President firmly on the enemy side of the culture wars in a Church that is herself divided, nationally and racially as well as globally.

As Massimo Faggioli points out in his recent book Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, Bidens own Catholicism pious, un-intellectual, and compassionate reflects the openness to the world of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. The Council document Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), issued on 7 December 1965, the day the Council ended, begins thus: The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. The problem for Biden, who would endorse these words, is that since the 1970s the Council and its documents have been subtly, and not so subtly, undermined, re-interpreted and politicised by conservative Catholics. When the social conservatives in the American Church looked outwards, they saw Obama as the leader of a militant secular modernisation and an overweening federal state, with Biden as his misguided Catholic apprentice. And for many, their enemies enemy, Donald Trump, became, at least electorally, their friend.

The third concern for Biden is that this polarisation within the American Church has contributed significantly to division within the global Church that came of age with the appointment of an Argentinian, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the first non-European Pope. The cardinals chose a Pope from the global South, further shifting the centre-periphery model of a Eurocentric Church towards a more networked, less command and control Church, a process described in my Global Catholicism: towards a networked Church (Hurst, 2012). Rome remained pre-eminent but the Curial bureaucracy surrounding the Pope found itself downgraded and under serious pressure to reform. The large American Church, traditionally punching well below its weight, assumed more significance, especially when Archbishop Carlo Mario Vigan, Vatican ambassador to the US from 2011 to 2016, led a virulent attack in 2018 on Pope Francis, alleging homosexual conspiracies and Vatican cover-ups of sexual abuse. Vigan, a former chief of Vatican Curial personnel, was able to draw on his wide range of personal contacts in his attempts to create a movement to marginalise and smear the Pope. He failed, but the tension within the divided American Church remains.

Biden can expect more moral support from the current Pope than from his two papal predecessors, but it is support that may come with a political cost. The President finds himself at the intersection of an unholy set of inter-related and interlocking pressures notably the tens of millions of Catholics who voted for Trump, ignoring his four years of attempted destruction of democracy. President and Pope are singing from the same hymn sheet over the climate crisis, sharing a compassionate openness towards gay sexuality, and a commitment to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, notably to Mass in the vernacular. In America the Latin Mass had become something of a Right-wing cause, supported by several bishops, among whom Cardinal Raymond Burke, formerly Archbishop of St. Louis, is the most prominent. These divisions within Catholicism mirror the divisions within the nation which President Biden has the enormous task of healing. He cannot look to the American Church to be part of the solution.

Bidens leadership as Commander-in-Chief during the tragedies of defeat and hasty evacuation in Afghanistan has done nothing to heal divisions in a shamed nation. Even though his new thinking about US military intervention will have found approval in Rome, he has received no accolades and derived little inspiration from the American Catholic hierarchy. It is high time they ended censorious and curmudgeonly criticism. They should show more concern for the future of democracy and the task of national healing that awaits Joe Biden, who is only the second Catholic to become President.

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American Catholics, Joe Biden and the bishops - TheArticle

Crickets culture wars can call a truce. There is something traditionalists and progressives agree on, and rather surprisingly its about the Hundred. Now the all-important final scores are in and were talking bums-on-seats and eyes-on-screen, not who hit most sixes or which weird-named franchise triumphed there is consensus on a single, indisputable fact. The tournament was A Good Thing for womens cricket.

For the hardcore sceptics, the grudging concession that the Hundred has been a gamechanger for women will not outweigh the collective trauma the competition has cost them. The undeniable benefits the womens game has derived from the format the increase in viewership, prestige, standards of pay and quality of play are all very well, but theyve still come at the cost of the future doom of the real game. What matters for the men matters most, because theirs is the Test arena, and theirs are the broadcasting millions, and theirs is the glory, for ever and ever, amen.

Still, back to the Good Thing: the womens side of the Hundred saw record attendances, unprecedented ticket sales and viewing figures in the millions. And one of its most successful elements, the double-header format, was simply a happy accident: a shrinking of logistics and ambitions caused by Covid protocols and shortfalls.

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Had a global pandemic not intervened, the womens and mens matches would have been staged separately, rather than played one after the other with a single ticket buying a seat to both. We cant be sure that the womens tournament would have enjoyed the same popularity if their matches had been relegated to other lets face it, smaller grounds. But we can be pretty certain there would have been a different atmosphere at the mens games.

There were clear indications of that in the first mens match at the Oval, the only one staged as a stand-alone. Far from being a family-friendly environment, that game was played against a beery, blokey backdrop recognisable to anyone whos been to a T20 finals day: the kind that numerous fans have shied from taking their kids to; the kind that the Hundred was, indeed, created to combat.

As it was, one of the most revealing outcomes as the tournament progressed was that the increased female presence at matches had a real and pleasurable impact on the fans experience. It would come up repeatedly in peoples conversations, an encouraging thing to hear: encouraging, moving and a little amusing, the kind of mix you feel when your friend finally discovers Parks and Recreation on Netflix and messages you how awesome it is a decade after you first told them to give it a try.

It turns out that transforming a sports stadium from a mostly male environment into a genuinely mixed one really can improve your day. That lowering the average testosterone level of a crowd will lessen its tendency towards antisocial behaviour, will reduce its inclination to drink too much and get a bit lairy and yell stupid, off-colour things that seem hilariously funny at the time. That it keeps at bay primal bursts of tribalistic aggression that we wouldnt allow anywhere else but find acceptable and even faintly praiseworthy when theyre construed as sporting passion or team loyalty.

This isnt news, of course, not really. Plenty of us knew that gender-balanced crowds dont ruin a sporting atmosphere by making it generally, you know, nicer. Anyone whos been to the tennis, or scored tickets to the London Olympics. All those whove attended womens football matches, or womens rugby games, or professional netball. The 24,000 people who went to the 2017 Womens World Cup final at Lords, and came away saying it was the best atmosphere they had encountered at a cricket match.

And yet its fair to say that until recently the presence of more women in cricket grounds or indeed any stadiums has rarely been a priority. On the sporting hierarchy of needs, its always been up at the esoteric top end, along with self-actualisation and human transcendence. Even we women who followed sport long before the men who ran it bothered to add us to the Venn diagrams in their marketing presentations accepted that we were entering a mans world. And if we didnt like the way some men behaved, we knew where we could go.

Macho posturing and a faintly edgy atmosphere have been endemic to the stadium experience for decades. Fans have kidded themselves that it simply goes with the territory. Most accept it as the price they pay for following the teams they love. Some those who like the idea of war minus the shooting will argue that its part of the purpose of spectator sport, an outlet for men and women (but primarily men) to express the full range of their emotions and work out their anger issues.

I know a number of devoted football fans male and female who gave up going to games because they couldnt bear the oppressive and often hostile environment of the walk to the station afterwards, the train rides home. The thought of that used to make me sad and furious but I could not see it changing.

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the more fans experience what its like to watch sport in a more gender-equal environment, the higher it will appear on their wishlist. Perhaps well learn that a positive outcome for women players, supporters, or newcomers can be the best thing for everyone in the long run. Perhaps well allow that it might even be worth some momentary rearrangement and experimentation in the mens game. After all, weve long put up with our own discomfort.

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The summer of cricket proved mixed crowds can improve the fan experience - The Guardian

Iran's Foreign Ministry has said the US is resorting to Hollywood scenarios in order to justify new sanctions against Tehran. Washington blacklisted Iranians accused of planning to kidnap a journalist in New York.

Supporters and merchants of sanctions, who see their sanctions tool box empty due to Iran's maximum resistance, are now resorting to Hollywood scenarios to keep the sanctions alive, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzabeh said in a statement.

Washington must understand that it has no choice but to abandon its addiction to sanctions and respect Iran.

On Friday, the US Treasury Department sanctioned four Iranians, whom a US court indicted in July on charges of plotting the kidnapping of New York-based Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, bank and money fraud, and money laundering.

US officials said the indicted Iranians were intelligence operatives, who hired a private investigator and wanted to transport Alinejad from New York to Venezuela on a military-style speedboat.

Alinejad said at the time that her alleged abduction attempt was orchestrated by Irans former President Hassan Rouhani.

Irans Foreign Ministry spokesperson Khatibzadeh dismissed the allegations as baseless and ridiculous.

US-Iranian relations began deteriorating rapidly after former US President Donald Trump took the country out of the 2015 international deal of the Iranian nuclear program and imposed several rounds of sanctions on Tehran.

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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday Iran was ready to hold talks with world powers to revive its 2015 nuclear accord but not under Western "pressure", adding Tehran was seeking negotiations leading to a lifting of U.S. sanctions.

"The Westerners and the Americans are after talks together with pressure ... I have already announced that we will have talks on our government's agenda but not with ... pressure," Raisi said in a live interview with state television.

"Talks are on the agenda ... We are seeking goal-oriented negotiations ... so sanctions on the Iranian people are lifted," Raisi said.

France and Germany have urged Iran to return to negotiations after a break in talks following Iranian elections in June, with Paris demanding an immediate restart amid Western concerns over Tehran's expanding atomic work.

Last month, France, Germany and Britain voiced concern about reports from the UN nuclear watchdog confirming Iran has produced uranium metal enriched up to 20% fissile purity for the first time and lifted production capacity of uranium enriched to 60%.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, that it has informed the watchdog about its activities, and that its moves away from the 2015 deal would be reversed if the United States returned to the accord and lifted sanctions.

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Washington, DC Tehran says it is seeking sanction relief; Washington says containing the Iranian nuclear programme is a national security priority.

And so, both countries maintained that they have an interest in reviving the 2015 nuclear deal. But six rounds of talks in Vienna earlier this year have failed to produce a path to restore the multilateral agreement.

The election of conservative President Ebrahim Raisi in Iran has further complicated the situation. Negotiations have been on ice since June with the Iranian government in transition. Last week, the Iranian parliament approved Raisis cabinet, but the parties are yet to set solid plans for resuming the negotiations.

With hardliners consolidating power in Iran and US President Joe Biden tackling multiple crises at home, analysts have said reviving the nuclear pact will be difficult.

Negar Mortazavi, an Iranian-American journalist and analyst, said she is pessimistic about the prospects of reinstating the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

A Raisi government run by ideologues and more interested in relations with China and Russia will not be rushing to negotiate with the US, she said.

Im prepared for the possibility that the return would not happen, Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

And this is not only on the Iranian side, but its also the Biden administration. Joe Biden himself even though he did promise a return to the JCPOA it doesnt seem like hes willing to spend the political capital that is required for this return.

As a candidate, Biden pledged to restore the deal that saw Iran curb its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions against its economy.

The administration says it seeks to make the deal longer and stronger and use it as a platform to address broader issues with Tehran, including Irans ballistic missiles and regional activities.

On Thursday, Irans foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Iran agrees in principle to resuming the Vienna talks.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said Amirabdollahian told his German counterpart, Heiko Maas, that negotiations must result in removing all sanctions on the country and fulfilling the rights of the Iranian people.

Amirabdollahian also made it clear that Tehran is more interested in ties in its immediate neighbourhood rather than repairing relations with the West.

Amirabdollahian blamed regional crises on interventions by foreign powers, saying the current Iranian administration will prioritise good relations with neighbours, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

But can regional ties, including with China and the Arab World, make sanctions relief a less pressing matter for Iran?

The consolidation of power across Iranian system by the conservatives and the hardliners means that you have a significant body of opinion who believes in the notion of a resistance economy, said Naysan Rafati, senior analyst on Iran at the Crisis Group.

Rafati explained that proponents of this idea argue that by relying on its domestic capabilities and regional trade, including exports of oil and gas, where sanctions allow, Iran can create an economy that may not be able to thrive but can survive.

World Bank data shows that Irans GDP is bouncing back into the positive despite sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic after a major dip in 2018 and 2019.

Rafati said the GDP rebound hides a multitude of fault lines in the Iranian economy, including high unemployment rates and rampant inflation, which have spurred up protests during the past year.

But there are individuals in the ascendancy within the Iranian system of government who genuinely believe that sanctions relief is overrated, and that Iran has in their view taken the sanctions hit on the chin and survived and can continue to do so, Rafati told Al Jazeera.

The US has been piling sanctions on Iran since former President Donald Trump nixed the JCPOA in 2018.

In turn, Iran has been escalating its nuclear programme, taking uranium enrichment to 60 percent from the 3.67-percent limit set by the agreement. Tehran has also restricted access to UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) inspectors to its nuclear facilities.

The Biden administration has been pushing a mutual compliance framework to revive the agreement the US removes sanctions; Iran rolls back its nuclear advances. However, the reality is far from being that straightforward.

Returning to adherence to the deal is a multilayered process fraught with complexities and areas of potential disagreements.

The Biden administration has said it would remove sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA, which grants relief for nuclear-related restrictions. That would not include terrorism and human rights sanctions.

Since 2015, Trump imposed more than 1,000 sanctions on Iran, and Biden added a few of his own.

The Biden administration has expressed willingness to remove some sanctions not officially labelled as nuclear. But Iran said it wants all sanctions revoked.

And so, the two countries have to agree on the scope of sanction relief. Even then, sanctions cannot be undone with the stroke of a pen. Removing them can be a lengthy process that involves several government agencies.

For Iran, returning to compliance does not only mean dropping the nuclear enrichment levels but also getting rid of the existing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and advanced centrifuges and reinstating the stringent international inspection regime with the IAEA.

Moreover, the nuclear know-how gained during the escalation of Irans programme may not be reversible.

At the talks in Vienna, the parties established working groups to address these issues. In April, then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatic moderate, said the negotiations had advanced about 70 percent in resolving disagreements.

But the conservative side of the Iranian leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has recently expressed dissatisfaction with the way the talks proceeded.

In a series of tweets late in August, Khamenei said the Raisi administration should forge friendly relations with other nations independently of the nuclear talks.

Diplomacy should not be impacted by the nuclear issue. In the nuclear issue, the US acted extremely shamelessly. he wrote. They withdrew from the #JCPOA but talked as if Iran had withdrawn from it. They ridiculed the negotiations. The Europeans acted like the US, too.

Biden, too, is touting other options to confront Iran and its nuclear programme if JCPOA talks fail.

Sina Toossi, a senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), warned that tensions between Tehran and Washington could intensify if the nuclear issue is not resolved.

If this new team from Iran is going to be demanding greater concessions and Biden is unwilling to give them, then were going to enter this mutual escalation phase again, Toossi told Al Jazeera.

He said Iran could further increase uranium enrichment, and the US this time with EU backing would bolster international sanctions.

Such an escalatory cycle can bring the sides to the brink of war if they do not agree on realistic bottom-line interests, Toossi added.

We have to decipher what those bottom-line interests are for each side, he said. And what exactly is the Biden administration willing to give, what exactly is Iran looking to get; where are they willing to meet on common grounds? It is unclear where that is.

For her part, Mortazavi faulted both sides for failing to find a solution, saying that the Biden administration continued to drive Trumps moving train of maximum pressure since it took office in January.

And on the Iranian side, the change in the administration has moved Iran in a political direction even farther from where they could meet halfway, Mortazavi said.

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