Who will guard the guardians?
Fr. George Rutler
Six or seven centuries “are like an evening gone” when tracing the course of common sense, and so James Madison found no anachronism in conjuring the shades of Juvenal and Cleon, more than six centuries apart, to make a point about the perils of the right and wrong manipulation of human will. He asked with Juvenal, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The dilemma, “Who will guard the guardians?” was the same dilemma...

With Cries That Pierce Me to the Heart: A Priestly Testimony of Grief in These Times...
Msgr. Charles Pope
The death of George Floyd at the hands of four Minnesota police officers is an event that united us all in shock and anger. As a video recording shows, Floyd’s pleas, and those of bystanders, went unheeded by an unmerciful and reckless officer, abetted by three other officers who didn’t intervene. Outrage and sorrow were the universal reaction by people of all political persuasions and races.

A black seminarian shares an experience with racism, and we should listen...
David Mills
The son of two professors, his father a minister and himself a professor, Matthew Hawkins was as respectable a man as you could find. He’d finished teaching one nice spring evening and decided to walk to a store a couple miles away. On the walk back, he wrote, “A police car pulled up, and the officer ordered me to spread eagle across the trunk of his car because, he said, a burglary had just been committed in the area.” The policeman’s aggression so startled him that he froze.

Brave nun spray-paints inspiring notes on building amid Cincinnati protests in viral video...

Why printers add secret tracking dots to documents, and how to decipher them...

The Vatican’s Choice: The brutal Xi Jinping regime, or the persecuted Catholic Jimmy Lai?
George Weigel
In mid-May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping unveiled a plan to bypass Hong Kong’s legislature and impose draconian new “national security” laws on the former British colony. Putatively intended to defend Hong Kong from “secessionists,” “terrorists,” and “foreign influence,” these new measures are in fact designed to curb the brave men and women of Hong Kong’s vibrant pro-democracy movement, who have been aggravating the Beijing totalitarians for a long time...

Pope talks George Floyd, racism, ‘self-destructive’ violence at Wednesday general audience...

Scott Hahn: What does the Bible tell us about this coronavirus and God’s punishment?

Apocalypse Now: And introduction to the Book of Revelation...
Jeff Mirus
By a “remarkable coincidence”, I am taking up the Book of Revelation as the final topic in my series on the books of the Bible. The coincidence is that this book, also called The Apocalypse, is of course the last book written that is the revealed Word of God. Penned by St. John near the end of his life, it is the final piece of Divine Revelation, which closed with the death of this last of the apostles. As the name suggests, this revelation to St. John for the Church concerns itself with the consummation of all things, including the end of the world. It is therefore a prolonged exhortation to prepare for God’s judgment.

Ven. Pierre Toussaint, born a slave, model of charity, pray for us!...
Elizabeth Scalia
The Archdiocese of New Orleans gives us gives us this lovely portrait of Venerable Pierre Toussaint, whose cause for sainthood has been languishing for too long. I recall telling my son, when he was in the third grade, that Toussaint might “soon be a saint.” My son is 35 years old now, and we are still waiting for further investigation into this great layman and philanthropist...

Bishop Robert Barron’s new ‘Word on Fire Bible’ leads with beauty and user-friendly commentary...

The curious case of Bishop Zhu Baoyu...
Michael Warren Davis
On May 7, Bishop Joseph Zhu Baoyu of Nanyang died peacefully in his sleep. The 98-year-old prelate is known throughout the world as the oldest person to contract the novel coronavirus and make a full recovery. It was an uplifting tale that brought comfort and hope to millions of Catholics struggling against despair in the face of the global pandemic. Photos show Bishop Zhu as a spry-looking chap with a kindly yet mischievous smile...

How St. John Henry Newman gently guided my thirsting soul to the Catholic Church...

Pentecost and the fires in our cities...

Daughters of St. Paul praying for looters after attack on Catholic bookstore...

Pentecost Sunday: “Let us look at the Church with the eyes of the Spirit and not as the world does”...

I have come to cast a fire on the earth — A homily for Pentecost Sunday...