Holy Week 2022: A Wartime Meditation
In both the Roman and Byzantine liturgical calendars, Lent 2022 has coincided with a brutal war in Ukraine. That war was launched by Russia’s Vladimir Putin for an ignoble, imperial
The Souls of Katyn—and Bucha—Weep
When Soviet Russia, then an ally of Nazi Germany, invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, it quickly helped complete the vivisection of the Second Poland Republic, which disappeared from the
No “Just Wars”?
Every war is a defeat for humanity, because men and women endowed with reason should be able to resolve their differences without mass violence. Reason, however, can be corrupted by
An Orthodox Awakening
For years, the two leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church with whom Pope Francis met by videoconference on March 16—Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, and Metropolitan Hilarion, the
Tyrants Like Putin Can’t Tolerate Truth
A friend once posed an intriguing hypothetical to Pope John Paul II. Suppose the entire Bible were destroyed. What one sentence or phrase would you want preserved for humanity’s future?
Archbishop Viganò and Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole
One of the minor characters in Evelyn Waugh’s World War II trilogy, Sword of Honor, is the commander of a super-secret military intelligence unit, Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole: a conspiracy theorist constantly connecting
“Thinking Catholic” About Ukraine and the Just-War Tradition
I really should get it rebound one day, my crumbling copy of The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, originally published in 1935 and compiled by John Eppstein, a British scholar.
Needed: An Ecumenical Reset
In the early 1990s, I met Kirill, now Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, when the man christened Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev was chief ecumenical officer of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Putin’s megalomania, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Truth About Prudence
By now, anyone paying the slightest attention to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, its people, and its sovereign independence knows that the Russian autocrat, deceived by his own distorted conviction
The Religious Roots of Ukrainian Resistance
As chilling as morally serious people find Vladimir Putin, his evident pleasure in humiliating his subordinates, and his wanton cruelty in brutalizing those who defy him (be they domestic opponents
Impending Russian attack on the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Kyiv?
Ukrainian intelligence reports suggest that Russian forces may deliberately target and attempt to destroy Saint Sophia, the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, in downtown Kyiv. If such an attack took place,
The “Revolution of Dignity” lives – and defends Itself
Two sets of images, widely circulated online over the weekend of 26-27 February, graphically illustrate the difference between the forces now locked in combat – military combat and moral combat
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