“We must live in the city to serve all the peoples in it, not just our own tribe.” – Tim Keller This August, Pope Leo XIV is asking us to join him in praying for evangelization in cities. This request reflects the difficulty of sharing the Gospel in densely populated areas, where neighbors...
On May 19, 1977, Salvadoran security forces occupied the town of Aguilares, expelled the Jesuits who were ministering there, and took over the parish church — turning it into a barracks. They opened fire on the tabernacle and scattered the consecrated hosts across the floor. Soon afterward, Archbishop Óscar Romero tried to enter...
Over the past years, the billionaire Peter Thiel has written and spoken widely – at a four-lecture series in San Francisco in 2025; in an interview with Ross Douthat in the New York Times; perhaps most prominently at an invitation-only conference in Rome, mere blocks from the Vatican, and most recently through a...
“We must live in the city to serve all the peoples in it, not just our own tribe.” – Tim Keller This August, Pope Leo XIV is asking us to join him in praying for evangelization in cities. This request reflects the difficulty of sharing the Gospel in densely populated areas, where neighbors...
On May 19, 1977, Salvadoran security forces occupied the town of Aguilares, expelled the Jesuits who were ministering there, and took over the parish church — turning it into a barracks. They opened fire on the tabernacle and scattered the consecrated hosts across the floor. Soon afterward, Archbishop Óscar Romero tried to enter...
Over the past years, the billionaire Peter Thiel has written and spoken widely – at a four-lecture series in San Francisco in 2025; in an interview with Ross Douthat in the New York Times; perhaps most prominently at an invitation-only conference in Rome, mere blocks from the Vatican, and most recently through a...
Lumen Gentium, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, says that the Church is “the universal sacrament of salvation” established for all people to encounter Christ and experience His liberating love. But many Catholics today feel a sense of homelessness in their own Church. We believe that Catholicism ought to have something urgent...
Synodality did not begin in 2021. It began in Jerusalem, around AD 49. Synodality, I keep reading, is confusing, maybe even undefinable. I recently sat through three days of it in practice, and nobody seemed confused. On July 6, Catholic News Service reported that the bishops representing North America in the synodal process...
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Decimus Junius Juvenal wrote a phrase destined to outlive the empire that inspired it: panem et circenses — “bread and circuses.” In his Satire X, he denounced how a citizenry that had once been the protagonist of public life had ultimately surrendered its political freedom...
“At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.’” (Lk 10:21) I have always appreciated...
One of the stranger developments surrounding the illicit Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) episcopal consecrations on July 1 was the sudden outbreak of agreement among Catholics across the spectrum that the Society had gone too far — they had committed a schismatic act and had incurred automatic excommunication from the Catholic Church....
As we begin a new, unfortunate chapter in the relations between the Catholic Church and the Society of St. Pius X, it is striking to see the casual indifference most SSPX adherents display toward the grave penalties imposed on them by the Vatican. Indeed, more than casual indifference, one senses an untroubled...
On a fall day in 1946, a twelve-year-old girl knelt before Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. He placed his hand on her head and blessed her as a Catholic war hero, honoring her for defending Poland against the Nazis. The name given to the Pope was Stefcia Skołkowska. She was one of...
The Vatican has clarified the role of the Pope in the wake of a controversial statement by US Ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch. The Holy Father’s “one true mission” is to be a spiritual shepherd who proclaims the Gospel. Any other roles he plays, including his position as a head of...
A review of Louis Massett’s Traddyland: Memoir of a Radical Traditional Catholic. Compared with other high-demand and fundamentalist religious movements, radical Catholic traditionalism has produced remarkably few memoirs by those who have experienced it from within. The most notable include Patricia Walsh Chadwick’s 2019 Little Sister, recounting her childhood in the 1950s and...
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