In Support of Jimmy Lai
As chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, John Lee is the principal enforcer of the Chinese communist regime’s ever-tightening chokehold on his city’s liberties. Earlier this month,
All Saints, All Souls, and Synod-2023
By their vocabulary, you shall know them? Well, to a considerable degree. And in these early November days, when the Church celebrates all the saints in glory and prays for
The Synod on Synodality at the Halfway Point
The Synod on Synodality meeting this month is the first of a two-part synodal assembly; the second session is scheduled to meet a year from now, in October 2024. No
Questions to Enliven Synod-2023
The first session of the “Synod on Synodality,” currently meeting in Rome, is slated to be followed by a second such month-long affair in October 2024. Both aim to build
The Hartford Appeal and the Synod on Synodality
In the winter of 1974, Richard John Neuhaus, then a Lutheran pastor, and Peter Berger, the distinguished sociologist of religion, spent an evening smoking cigarillos in the Bergers’ Brooklyn Heights
The Blessed Ulma Family and Our Catholic Moment
It’s a rare occasion when the word “unprecedented” can be used for a Church whose history extends over two millennia. Yet something unprecedented happened in the Polish village of Markowa
Solidarity with a Martyr-Church
Ever since the 1596 Union of Brest re-established full communion between the Bishop of Rome and several ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Eastern Europe, what we know today as the Ukrainian Greek
Living Communio in Cracow
I wish all those who find themselves concerned, depressed, befuddled, or angry at the present state of the Church could have spent July 3–21 in that city of saints, Cracow,
Archbishop Fernández and the Learning Curve
Pope Francis has just given the Vatican his Ratzinger,” declared one July 2 headline; “Pope Francis Finds His Ratzinger,” announced another, four days later. Both quickie assessments of Argentinian Archbishop
The Vatican’s China Deal Unravels Further
The latest self-inflicted blow to the Vatican’s China policy came in mid-July, when the Holy See announced that Pope Francis had “recognized” Bishop Joseph Shen Bin as Bishop of Shanghai—despite
From Westerplatte to Lisbon… and Everywhere Else
Westerplatte, a narrow peninsula framing the Bay of Gdańsk, was the scene of one of the first battles of World War II in Europe. On September 1, 1939, the German
Looking for the Lord Jesus in Lisbon
In mid-May, I spent two intense days in Lisbon, where a new Portuguese edition of my Letters to a Young Catholic was being prepared as a catechetical resource for World Youth Day
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