Archbishop Arthur Roche, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, recently sent the world’s bishops instructions regulating local usage of the Traditional Latin Mass. Those instructions were intended to implement Pope Francis’s 2021 motu proprio , Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of the Tradition), which strictly limited the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal. Traditionis Custodes presented itself as a defense of the authority and integri

Photo by Wojciech Pysz | Wikipedia Despite being immersed for over 30 years in the study of modern Polish history, I must confess that I’d never heard of the heroic Ulma family until recently. I’ll get to the circumstances of my being introduced to these 20th-century martyrs in a moment. But first, consider their story. Józef Ulma was a prominent personality in Markowa, a village in southeastern Poland. Born in 1900, he had a more extensive education than many of his neighbor

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash There have been vast improvements in the techniques and technology of filmmaking since 1961, when Stanley Kramer made Judgment at Nuremberg . But it’s difficult to imagine any cast today improving on the extraordinary performances of Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift in that gripping courtroom drama, which explores the meaning of justice in Germany’s — and

Organizers and a limited number of participants marched in the 48th annual March for Life in Washington D.C. on Jan. 29, 2021, in a scaled down event due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Claudette Jerez/CNA) The annual March for Life in Washington began in 1974 — and it’s hard to think of a more admirable or consistent public witness to the dignity of the human person being given for so many years by so many people of all races, religions, and social classes. The March

A common misconception holds that early “modernity” invented the “individual”: the idea that everyone is a someone with a unique identity independent of family, tribe, racial group, or nation. And from that idea of individuality, it’s argued, came the most distinctive civilizational accomplishments of the West. Those accomplishments (it’s further argued) are now threatened by progressive and conservative forms of collectivism that threaten individual prerogative and initiativ

While history is always full of surprises, including happy ones, I must confess that I’m not full of Pentecostal joy as I consider the next 12 months. World politics are likely to be grim. The Russian bear will continue his aggression in Ukraine, perhaps kinetically. China will intensify its pressure on Taiwan after the Winter Olympics (during which the communist regime’s massive human rights violations will not receive nearly as much media attention as the BLM movement did i

People from across the U.S. gathered outside the Supreme Court for the oral arguments of the Dobbs vs Jackson abortion case. (Photo by Katie Yoder/CNA) I first met Erika Bachiochi — then Erika Schubert — in July 1998, when she was my student in the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society in Cracow. She had graduated from Middlebury College two years before and was doing a master’s program in theology at Boston College, which she completed in 1999. Erika received her law

ROME. A massive, 16-volume Lives of the Saints , first published between 1872 and 1877, informs me that, here in the Eternal City, the feast of Christmas first became a celebration distinct from the ancient feast of the Epiphany in the mid-fourth century — and that St. John Chrysostom, one of the four doctors of the Church who support the cathedra in Bernini’s bronze masterpiece, The Altar of the Chair , in the Vatican Basilica, “used his utmost endeavor” to promote the cele

When I began working with some regularity in Rome 30 years ago, my elders and betters taught me that no one paid much attention to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano . The exception to that rule was the daily section with the charming title Nostre Informazioni (“Our Informations”), in which papal audiences, episcopal appointments, and other tidbits of interest to those obsessed with Who’s Up and Who’s Down are recorded. (The most famous of these nuggets was the brie

Photo by Zhang Kaiyv on Unsplash In July 2016, as we were sitting on the fantail of the Swiss sidewheeler Rhone while she chugged across Lake Geneva, my host pointed out the city of Lausanne, where a massive, glass-bedecked curvilinear building was shimmering in the summer sun. “Isn’t that the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee?” I asked. When my friend replied in the affirmative, I said, “I thought I smelled it.” That rank odor — the stench of greed overpowe

Photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash Some suggestions for Christmas giving, in the form of books that amuse, inspire, educate or all-of-the-above: Prison Journal, Volume 3 – The High Court Frees an Innocent Man , by Cardinal George Pell (Ignatius Press). The vindication of Cardinal George Pell by Australia’s High Court in April 2020 was an unalloyed joy amidst Plague Time. With this third volume, Ignatius Press completes the publication of Cardinal Pell’s remarkable prison diary, w

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash This Thanksgiving, no one living in the United States should be anything but profoundly grateful for the privilege of living in this country. No one. That’s not necessarily a popular sentiment today. The country is amidst one of its periodic spasms of self-flagellation, amplified by political hucksters and charlatans of right and left (nothing new) and by social media demagogy (something new and ominous). And no doubt there’s a lot to ponder,

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash Among those in the ultramundane pantheon of communist mega-monsters, Lev Davidovich Bronstein (better known by his Bolshevik nom de guerre, Leon Trotsky) is a more interesting human personality than Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Joseph Stalin or, in the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, “Uncle Joe”). Trotsky actually had ideas, however misshapen, and something vaguely resembling a conscience. Stalin was pathologically power-mad and had

As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops prepares to meet in Baltimore, misconceptions about a proposed conference statement on the Eucharistic vitality and integrity of the Church in America abound. The confusions originating from online Catholic sources and social media have been exacerbated by a mainstream press that has consistently misrepresented what the bishops are doing. I hope the following clarifications are useful. The proposed statement is not primarily

By any worldly measure, 1946 was an annus horribilis in Poland. With the exceptions of Cracow and Lodz, every Polish city lay in ruins. The homeless and displaced numbered in the millions. As a ruthless Stalinism tightened its grip on a country that had been doubly decimated during World War II, losing 20% of its pre-war population, heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance were executed on spurious charges by Poland’s new communist overlords. Yet in the oft-puzzling ways of Provid

Photo: Vatican Media/CNA Certain Catholic media platforms that often function as de facto extensions of Jen Psaki’s White House Press Office have continually urged the U.S. bishops to dodge the issue of pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving holy communion. Pope Francis, for his part, offered some helpful comments on this contentious matter during a September press conference, held as he was returning to Rome from a visit to Hungary and Slovakia. “Those who are not in th

Some years ago, a Catholic prep school invited me to address its parents’ association on the future of Catholic education. After describing how a truly Catholic education, stressing human and sacramental formation as well as intellectual competence, equipped young people to meet the challenges of a world that had lost its way, I got into a protracted dust-up during the Q&A period. In my prepared remarks, I had extolled the virtues of small Catholic liberal arts colleges with

Photo by Edoardo Farneti/Wikicommons When I met Cardinal Agostino Casaroli on February 14, 1997, the architect of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik and its soft-spoken approach to communist regimes in east central Europe in the 1960s and 1970s could not have been more cordial. I was then preparing the first volume of my biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope , and in requesting a session with the retired cardinal, I emphasized two points: I wanted to understand the theory be

Photo by Jonathan Sanchez on Unsplash Do Catholics “believe that human life begins at conception” — a formulation that’s become ubiquitous in recent weeks? Well, yes, in precisely the same sense that Catholics “believe” that the Earth is spherical, not flat; that Venus is the second planet in the solar system; that a water molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom; that blood circulates through the body; that the human heart has four chambers; and so fort

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash In the summer before the Second Vatican Council opened, Pope John XXIII met with Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens in the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. “I know what my part in the Council will be,” the Pope told the Belgian archbishop. “It will be to suffer.” Pope John was prescient, and not just because the Council’s opening weeks would prove contentious; shortly before Vatican II began its work, the Pope was diagnosed with the painful canc