Five Great Motets
The Church’s liturgy has inspired great choral music for centuries. Unfortunately, that part of Catholicism’s cultural memory has been somewhat misplaced in recent years. One reason why is the widespread
The Church and the End of the Welfare State
Throughout the post-Vatican II years, the U.S. bishops’ conference has typically defended the welfare state and not infrequently urged its expansion. Everyone familiar with the situation knows that this has
Catholics and Modernity
Cracow—Somewhere on the far side of what Tom Wolfe called the Halusian Gulp, Father Francis X. Murphy, C.Ss.R., is reading the July 11 Washington Post and groaning—if, that is, his
Beyond the Fortnight for Freedom
Kraków, July 4. The sensitivity to local anniversaries in the Catholic liturgical calendar often makes for happy, if coincidental, intersections with the civil calendar. Thus the “Fortnight for Freedom,” a
The Vatican Secret Archives Unveiled
Rome—The very name “Vatican Secret Archives” tends to trigger the Dan Brown reflex in minds given to conspiracy theories and black legends about the Catholic Church. In fact, there is
FORTNIGHT FOR FREEDOM — U.S. Catholics and Religious Liberty: The Origins
Several months ago, I came across a two-volume history of the Church in the United States I’d never read before: Theodore Maynard’s The Story of American Catholicism, first published in
The Handwriting on the Wall
A version of this essay was delivered as the 11th Annual William E. Simon Lecture in Washington on February 7, 2012. In recent years, roiled as they have been by
Light From the South
Prior to an April visit to Argentina, I read the “Aparecida Document,” the final report of the Fifth General Assembly of the Bishop of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM),
Don’t Know Much About Theology…
Casual observers of Catholic affairs, reading the press in recent weeks, might well conclude that the Vatican is trying to distract attention from its own internal woes — Vatileaks, and
The Sisters: Two Views
After the April announcement that the Vatican was taking the Leadership Conference of Women Religious into a form of ecclesiastical receivership, appointing Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain to oversee the
Catholic “Americanism”
On January 22, 1899, Pope Leo XIII addressed an encyclical letter to Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore and, through him, to the entire Catholic hierarchy of the United States. Entitled
The Vatican and the Sisters
In Chariots of Fire, two of the elders of Cambridge University invite the young Jewish runner Harold Abrahams to a formal, black-tie luncheon, during which they try to dissuade the
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