Catholics are human beings like everyone else. Among Catholics there is every degree of good and evil—just as, conversely, in all religions there are men of interior purity who through their myths somehow touch the great mystery and find the right way of being human. I think that we shouldn’t try to calculate...
The first installment of this literary meditation was posted on Tuesday; this second installment deals thematically with art and beauty, and with their true power. The conclusion, with its promised light and joy, will follow soon. As was the case with the first installment, I encourage everyone to listen to the spoken version that...
[This is Part 3 of the series “Religion in Society.” Click for Part 1 and Part 2.] What could the Church possibly have to learn from a 19th century radical novel that inspired Lenin and Xi Jinpeng? Well… it’s complicated. This is the story: About one hundred and sixty years ago, a man...
A Brief Meditation on Today’s Mass Readings Today’s Gospel passage is nested in a literary configuring which itself tells a story: the first two chapters, alone among the pages of Luke, recall a genre specific to early Judaism, known as a Haggadic Midrash. The priest Zechariah is wed to a woman of the tribe...
Last week, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition, a document that seeks to promote awareness of antisemitism and to equip Catholics to address it effectively within their communities. The sixty-three-page edition contains explanations of antisemitic caricatures, symbols, ideas, and language....
Any call to action, no matter how necessary and well-meaning, will devolve into platitudes unless we have some idea of when and how to put it into practice. In his 2019 motu proprio letter Vos Estis Lux Mundi, Pope Francis called for “a continuous and profound conversion of hearts… attested by concrete and...
Through the Church—the sacrament of God’s infinite love—her Scriptures, her Tradition, her prayers, and her liturgies, people can encounter the living Christ and experience his love, healing, and transformative grace. But what happens when the men and women tasked with mediating God’s grace, appointed to preach God’s word and preside over the sacraments,...
[Author’s note: This piece explores, through the lens of my own experience, humanity’s need for salvation, with all our impulse to creativity and self-determining possibility for good or for ill. The piece requires patience, as it is not until the end that the light comes. I am including a recording of my reading...
Last month I traveled to Baltimore to cover the USCCB’s Fall Plenary Assembly. There were some worthwhile speeches and discussions at the meeting, as well as some interesting results in a couple of elections for new committee chairmen. For an influential segment of US Catholics, however, the main event didn’t take place inside...
Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of illhealth; disability...
What do catechizing the faithful and safeguarding them from abuse have in common? Both, the Church teaches, are responsibilities belonging to the entire Catholic community. In his 2019 letter Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You Are the Light of the World”), Pope Francis called for “a continuous and profound conversion of hearts… attested by...
In my last article, I described how the Church’s opposition to the death penalty, formalized in Pope Francis’s 2018 revision of the Catechism, reflects more than just a momentary shift; it is the culmination of a long, deliberate development in doctrine. For over a century, successive popes — from Benedict XV to Francis...
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