Gender ideologies and the need for Christian anthropology...
The secret to creating a soulful, beautiful (and kid-friendly) home...
A lesson from Tolkien on grief (and hope)...
Today, as I write, is the sixth anniversary of my sister’s death. Two years younger, and my only sibling, she’d gone to the ER six months before for a blood clot and found she had terminal cancer. I was with her most of those six months. Karen died in hospice, just before the sun came up, about 10 hours after she went in. My wife and I kept vigil...
The triumph of failure: A tale of two bishops...
“If we achieve great things outside of ourselves, and the achieving of them does not effect any change or development in ourselves, we have done nothing. Life’s purpose is to purify us, not gratify us.” So says Father Edward Leen reflecting on “the triumph of failure,” the way in which God’s work in the soul, and correspondingly in the world...
Say what you will, but this cardinal’s sheer bravado is breathtaking...
Imagine that the U.S. Secretary of the Interior or some such official was leading a humanitarian convoy in Ukraine, at the direct request of U.S. President Joe Biden, when it came under fire from Russian forces. She’d be swarmed by her security detail, whisked off to some impenetrable bunker and then shoved onto the first flight home...
Trial opens for Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen...
Blood of St. Januarius liquefies in Naples on feast day...
Mass used to involve precise rubrics for the priest. Now it’s more about micro-managing some made-up rubrics for the congregation...
Over the weekend I headed up to Louisville to celebrate another family birthday. There was no sightseeing along the way, as there had been last time, but I did get to Mass at another Louisville parish – the beautiful St. Martin de Tours. It was the 10am Ordinary Form (the parish also offers EF and Ordinariate). The church was pretty full...
Take a lesson from the Dishonest Steward’s bold shrewdness...
It’s better to be faithful in a few things than ruler over many things...
In this Sunday’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives a penetrating analysis of the state of the sinner and some very sobering advice to us would-be saints. Let’s look at the Gospel in two stages. First, in the opening lines of today’s Gospel, Jesus describes a sinful steward. Then, after analyzing the sinner, the Lord has some advice for those of us sinners who want to be saints...
Pope’s Sunday Angelus: ‘Be Creative in Doing Good With the Prudence and Cleverness of the Gospel’...
How do ants crawl on walls? A biologist explains their sticky, spiky, gravity-defying grip...
People are lining up for miles to walk past the Queen’s coffin because love, honor and sacrifice matter to them. The bishops who water down Catholicism need to learn from this...
We’ve seen nothing like this since the funeral of John Paul II, but in England, an uncountable crowd is queueing up and patiently waiting to quietly file past Queen Elizabeth’s flag-draped coffin. People are being warned that this may involve standing and creeping along for as much as thirty hours in the autumn dampness and chill...
Catholic hospitals serve the sick and dying — and they have a duty to serve them as Catholics...
Being a man or woman is nature’s gift...
It is not surprising that the most controversial, and personally challenging, moral issues of our day touch directly upon what is ‘by nature.’ An important distinction can help us think more clearly about this. It is one thing to discern what is ‘by nature’ or not. It is another thing to see whether and to what extent what is ‘by nature’ should be a guide for our action...
Two dead popes, the loss of Avignon, and the first American canonized...
A new liturgical war — and the path to liturgical victory...
Computers can never be persons...
I cannot see Catholicism ever attributing personhood to complex machines, but I predict that others will begin to in the coming decades. As new applications are programed to increasingly replicate human conversation and emotion I could see young people imagining them as their real friends. As anthropomorphized technology’s creative feats far surpass our human abilities...
Finding the bishops we need...
There was considerable excitement in some quarters this summer when Pope Francis appointed three women as members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, which makes recommendations to the pope for episcopal appointments in much of Latin-rite Catholicism. Whether this innovation will make any significant difference at the final stage of a long...
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral was strikingly Christian...
It was the grandest state funeral in history for history’s longest-serving monarch. First and last, though, it was a Christian funeral. The Church of England rendered a signal service to all Christians in providing a model for how funerals ought to be conducted, in a time when both sacred and civic funeral liturgies have become rather emaciated...
After Roe, we must treasure adoption...
hanksgiving has come early this year. The dialogue comes from the movie Lifemark, currently in a limited run at theaters. It’s a true story of adoption. Lifemark was inspired by the documentary I Lived on Parker Avenue, which chronicled a young man (David Colton) as he journeyed to meet his birth mother and father. (The abortion clinic that Colton’s birth mother walked away from in Indiana is on Parker Avenue...
Here’s the right way to approach a dog you don’t know, according to veterinarians...
Catholic celebrities, sought-after pastors, internet personalities: Beware! Popularity changes you imperceptibly and carries a high cost. Welcome your humiliations and setbacks...
I was texting with a Greek Orthodox priest friend this summer about celebrity in ecclesiastical culture, after sending him a clip from a popular Orthodox nun on YouTube. After a number of comments on that, he said: In American culture, the cult of celebrity is a dangerous field to enter. Especially in a digital age. Popularity carries a high cost...
What does Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral liturgy tell the world about her faith?
This week something unexpected happened after I filed my national “On Religion” column, something that I have never seen before in my decades of religion-news work. What? A retired literature professor responded to my column with a poem. The topic was easy to predict. Like millions of other people around the world, but especially in Great Britain and the Commonwealth...
To grasp what today’s complicated Gospel means, let’s start by retelling it in modern terms...
Great teachers make difficult things simple so that you can understand them right away. But the greatest teachers also give you lessons that you have to sit with and ponder, because the lessons you personally discover sink even more deeply into your soul. Jesus, the master teacher, does both. In last Sunday’s Gospel, he told us complicated lessons in a simple way in the Parables of the Lost Sheep...
Pondering the Church’s electoral college one year from now...
Pope Francis: ‘The West Has Taken the Wrong Paths’...
There are currently 3,311 billionaires in the world. Here’s a breakdown of where they live...
Interreligious Dialogue ‘Urgently Needed,’ Pope Francis Says at Close of Kazakhstan Congress...
A Post-Classical Perspective on Valuing Children During the Back-to-School Season...
What does the Catholic Church think of monarchy?
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