(Photo: Jüppsche / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0) I first met Joseph Ratzinger when I was 15 years old. No, not in person, but I was...

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain) The Joseph Ratzinger I knew for 35 years — first as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine...

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash Amidst the sundry aggravations of contemporary life in these United States, few have such a cringe-inducing effect on me as a ubiquitous neologism that appeared eight times in a November column in the Wall Street Journal . The article in question speculated on the future contract possibilities of the wondrous Aaron Judge, whose 2022 campaign with the Yankees may have been the greatest offensive season in baseball history. But there is offens

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash We count our years from the birth of Christ, and Christmas begins the year of the Lord 2023. The secular practice of making a resolution for the new year can find deeper meaning when connected to the birth of the savior. The focus on presents and cheer can overshadow the Christmas feast’s great transformative power. A resolution for the new year should begin at the manger, asking Jesus to draw us into the grace of his birth, as we reflect on

The Annunciation, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1655-1660. Now, on Christmas Day, the nine months have been fulfilled. What began on the day of Annunciation is made visible to the world in the person of the newborn babe of Bethlehem, who is both Son of God and Son of Mary. History is forever changed. The “little flock” of whom Jesus will speak in Luke 12:32 (“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”) is already here: in Mary and Jos

A scene that’s sadly all too familiar to the United States, especially to Colorado, but quite foreign to idyllic Connecticut… Today we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a mere 20 miles from where this very author grew up. This morning, the Archdiocese of Denver gathered in prayer to mark the morbid anniversary and to beg the Lord’s grace and nearness to those 26 who were killed, as well as all those injur

Several weeks ago, I was invited on short notice to help “fill a table” at a benefit dinner. The theme of the evening was the Roaring...

Daniel Ibañez/CNA The Year of Our Lord 2023 will likely witness Catholic dramas we cannot predict now; that is the way of Providence. What we can know with certainty about next year is that the German crisis in the world Church will come to a head, because what’s happening in Germany will collide with the first session of the Synod on Synodality for a Synodal Church in October 2023. And the resolution of the German crisis will be, if not wholly determinative, then hugely cons

My state witnessed an unmitigated tragedy on Nov. 19 when a gunman opened fire in a gay club in Colorado Springs, killing five and...

Photo by Andreea Radu on Unsplash Last month’s midterm elections made it painfully clear that many pro-life advocates and politicians are at sea in the post-Roe v. Wade environment. Shawn Carney and Steve Karlen’s What to Say When: The Complete New Guide to Discussing Abortion (Kolbe & Anthony Publishing) is a good primer for all those working to rebuild a culture of life in the United States. David Hoffman’s Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and His Daring Que

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash Memo to both newly elected members of Congress like J.D. Vance and incumbents like Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy: It’s time to stop sloganeering (“America First!” “No blank checks for Ukraine!”) and get serious about what is happening in eastern Europe. A good place to start would be to revisit the 1948 Genocide Convention. That treaty, to which the United States is an accessory, defined “genocide” as “any of the following acts committed

Hundreds of pro-abortion demonstrators tried to block a monthly pro-life march and prayer vigil at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Lower Manhattan on July 2, 2022, setting off a tense confrontation. (Photo by Jeffrey Bruno/CNA) Catholics are not winning any popularity contests. Not only do we still face fallout from the abuse crisis, we also now regularly hear accusations of “hate” for our stances on life and sexual morality. We certainly have a long fight ahead of us

Photo by James McNellis via Wikicommons CC BY 2.0 I’ll confess to some exasperation when, during the 2016 campaign, Republican vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence described himself as an “evangelical Catholic.” Three years earlier, I had published a book on the Catholic future entitled Evangelical Catholicism , and what Mr. Pence meant by being an “evangelical Catholic” — a cradle Catholic who had really come to know the Lord Jesus through evangelical Protestantism — was not

Jesus and The Disciples Going To Emmaus by Gustave Doré, edited. (Photo: Public Domain) This past Summer, I celebrated the tenth...

Thanks to the Franco-Prussian War, the First Vatican Council was suspended in October 1870 and never reconvened. Before its unanticipated end, Vatican I did important work: it defined the universal scope of papal jurisdiction (and thus frustrated the claims of the new nationalists to authority over the Church) while spelling out the precise, limited circumstances in which the Bishop of Rome can teach infallibly on matters of faith and morals. Nonetheless, the council’s abrupt

In my last column, I wrote about the Eucharist as the food we need to spiritually survive and flourish in our secular culture. Jesus is...

(Photo: Jill Dimond / Unsplash) Well, I still haven’t mastered the art of writing columns AHEAD of major Catholic feasts and observances....

Allegory of the Eucharist, Alexander Coosemans, ca. 1641. The Eucharist is a great work of cooperation. We supply the matter — the bread and wine, which is not simply natural material, but the produce of human work and culture — that God then transforms into the Body and Blood of Christ. Bread and wine are so central to the history of human culture that they could even be more simply expressed as “food” and “drink.” Although we see wine as an extraneous pleasure or something

On the morning of October 17, 1978, the newly-elected Pope John Paul II concelebrated Mass with the College of Cardinals and pledged that the program of his papacy would be the full implementation of the Second Vatican Council. That was his “definitive duty,” for the Council had been “an event of utmost importance” in the two millennia of Christian history. As I explain in To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books), the next 26-and-a-half years saw Jo

(Photo: Jackson David / Unsplash) Have you ever encountered a situation where your response was…well, weird? Where you could see that you...