ALEXANDRE MEN - PRETRE ORTHODOXE RUSSE - ASSASSINE EN 1990 NE: DECEDE: 1990 I’ve been thinking recently about Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” and its relationship to a deceased Russian Orthodox priest. As the Soviet Union was crumbling in 1990, two roads metaphorically diverged in a Russian wood. One was the path of national renewal facilitated by an evangelically vibrant, intellectually open and ecumenically engaged Russian Orthodoxy; the other was the more famili

(Photo: Adobe Stock, edited) There are disadvantages to writing a monthly column in a 24 hour news cycle world. By the time my time rolls...

Credit: © L'Osservatore Romano Pope Francis is undoubtedly grieved by the carnage in Ukraine. And when the Catholic Church’s chief ecumenical officer, Cardinal Kurt Koch, tells journalists he shares the papal conviction that religious justifications of aggression are “blasphemy” — a wicked use of the things of God — we may be sure that this, too, is Francis’s view of things. Why, then, should Pope Francis meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’, as some personalitie

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 cause. It has been conducted by the Russian military in a manner that recalls the barbarism of the Romans who crucified 6,000 slaves along the Appian Way after the Spartacus revolt. It’s an old story. Tyrants cannot tolerate the truth about their tyranny; they terrorize in order to break the spiri

It sounds like a paradox, but Jesus taught us with his life that the key to conquering death is surrendering to the Father in trust. The...

Photo by Nheyob via Wikicommons “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” Our Lady of Fatima offered hope in the Second Secret she revealed in 1917 that despite the horrific onslaught hitting the world, including “war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father,” her heart would still conquer all. While Russia would spread her errors throughout the world, she called on Catholics to counter its socialist ideology with intensified prayer and sacrifice.

Photo by SalemPuritan via Wikicommons On May 13, 1982, Pope John Paul II flew to Portugal on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for his life having been spared the year before. At the airport welcoming ceremony, the Pope, reflecting that he’d been shot on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, mused that, “In the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.” What we think of as coincidental is rather a facet of the divine plan for our lives that we’ve not fit into the proper fr

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 ignorance, passion, ideology, pride, and innumerable other vices. And the distortion of reason can make the slaughter of others, including innocents, seem not only permissible, but even imperative. Thus within his own warped frame of reference, Vladimir Putin’s barbaric assault on Ukraine makes se

(Photo by André Escaleira, Jr.) Having worked across the street from two major abortion facilities in my life, I have watched many women...

Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, Raphael, 1509-10. Theology gets a bad rap, often seen as a bunch of eggheads asking questions that no one really cares about. In the Middle Ages, it revolved around how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, or so the legend goes. Today it focuses on doctrinal subtleties and commandments that most people would rather do away with. Theology matters, however, because truth matters. God is Truth and he has revealed himself to us so that

For years, the two leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church with whom Pope Francis met by videoconference on March 16 — Kirill, Patriarch...

One of the minor characters in Evelyn Waugh’s World War II trilogy, Sword of Honor , is the commander of a super-secret military...

Assumption of the Virgin, Corregio, ca. 1526-1530. Well, I was typing on my phone during Mass again last Sunday. My fellow parishioners...

Photo from premier.gov.ru 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. The occasion was a dinner hosted at the Library of Congress by the late, great James H. Billington, whose history of Russian culture, The Icon and the Axe , remains the classic work on the subject. Metropolitan Kirill, as he was then styled, struck me as a sophisti

Several years ago, I was making a 30-day Ignatian silent retreat when a few days into the retreat I got a hankering for ice cream. As I...

Photo by Lawrence OP via Flickr If you’ve not been in the Vatican basilica on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, by all means put that on your bucket list. Not only is February 22 the day when the statue of the Prince of the Apostles, with its famously worn-down bronze foot, is clothed in a splendid cope and crowned with a papal tiara, it’s also the only day on which the Altar of the Chair, the massive sculptural composition in the basilica’s apse, is ablaze wi

Jesus regularly challenged his followers, inviting them to put the kingdom first by denying themselves and taking up their cross. Jesus did not teach self-affirmation of one’s own desires or that we should prioritize human relationships over following the Gospel. Rather, he said, “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of m

Photo by Rostislav Artov on Unsplash For months now, the world press has described Russian troop deployments along Ukraine’s borders as spearheads of a possible invasion. The truth, however, is that Russia invaded Ukraine seven years ago, when it annexed Crimea and Russian “little green men” ignited a war in eastern Ukraine that has taken over 14,000 lives and displaced over a million people. Whatever the current military developments, a Russian invasion of Ukraine has not be

Photo by Charles Unitas on Unsplash Twenty years ago, during the Long Lent of 2002, I began using the term “Catholic Lite” to describe a project that detached the Church from its foundations in Scripture and Tradition: a Catholicism that could not tell you with certainty what it believes or what makes for righteous living; a Church of open borders, unable or unwilling to define those ideas and actions by which full communion with the Mystical Body of Christ is broken. The Cat

What gave the early Christians the desire to leave behind their professions, travel to foreign lands and, in most cases, give their...