Demythologizing Conclaves
Pope Francis’s recent announcement that he will create twenty-one new cardinals on August 27, sixteen of whom would vote in a conclave held after that date, set off the usual
The Cardinal and Jimmy
Tertullian, the first major Christian theologian to write in Latin, is thought to have coined the maxim Semen est sanguis Christianorum, typically (and rather freely) translated as “the blood of martyrs
A New Patron Saint for Catholic Journalism
ROME. As of May 15, Catholic journalists around the world will be able to count one of their number among the saints, as Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite killed at
The Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow
Pope Francis is undoubtedly grieved by the carnage in Ukraine. And when the Catholic Church’s chief ecumenical officer, Cardinal Kurt Koch, tells journalists he shares the papal conviction that religious
The Recovery of Fraternal Correction Among Bishops
In the golden age of the Catholic episcopate—the days of great Church Fathers like Cyprian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo in the early and mid-first millennium—bishops were not infrequently
Lent, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and the Liberating Lightness of Truth
If you’ve not been in the Vatican basilica on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, by all means put that on your bucket list. Not only
Liquid Catholicism and the German Synodal Path
Twenty years ago, during the Long Lent of 2002, I began using the term “Catholic Lite” to describe a project that detached the Church from its foundations in Scripture and
Undercutting Vatican II to Defend Vatican II?
Archbishop Arthur Roche, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, recently sent the world’s bishops instructions regulating local usage of the Traditional Latin Mass. Those instructions were intended to
No Optimism, Much Hope
While history is always full of surprises, including happy ones, I must confess that I’m not full of Pentecostal joy as I consider the next twelve months. World politics are
The Difference Christianity Made
How did Christianity shape the civilization of the West? Let me count (some of) the ways, with an assist at several points from British intellectual historian Larry Siedentop. The story
The Vatican’s Unread Newspaper and the U.S. Bishops
When I began working with some regularity in Rome thirty years ago, my elders and betters taught me that no one paid much attention to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. The
What the Bishops Really Said at Baltimore
After the bishops of the United States adopted “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church” on November 17, it took the Washington Post less than an hour to
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