Photo by specphotops | Unsplash It’s amazing what happens in what many people call “flyover” country, where many Catholics quietly are going about the work of rebuilding in the nation’s heartland. On a recent road trip through Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, my family explored a corridor running through the center of the country, home to many vibrant communities that can serve as models in our efforts to live the faith and share its beauty. Setting out from Den

Photo by Aron Visuals | Unsplash In one of his Blackford Oakes novels, William F. Buckley, Jr. had a character crack a Wagnerian joke along these lines: What is Siegfried ? Siegfried is the opera that begins at 7 p.m. and when you wake up three hours later, you’re shocked to find out that it’s only 7:30. That was certainly my experience when, in solidarity with my late father-in-law, a wonderful man and devout Wagner fan, I attended the third installment of Wagner’s Ring Cyc

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0 The subject-line on the email was, shall we say, striking: “Crone swoops with talons toward younger women with babies.” The predatory beldame in question was Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and my cyber-correspondent was drawing my attention to this Tweet from @SenWarren: “With Roe gone, it’s more important than ever to crack down on so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that mislead and deceive patients seeking abortion care.

On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II had lunch in the papal apartment with Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the renowned French pediatrician and...

Hundreds of pro-abortion demonstrators tried to block a monthly pro-life march and prayer vigil at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic...

Photo by John Winder via Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 It is easy to forget that the Catholic Church is composed of 24 self-governing Churches with distinct liturgical rites. We lose sight of this because the Latin Church, which worships according to the Roman Rite, comprises the overwhelming majority of Catholics throughout the world. The war in Ukraine has put the spotlight on one of these 24 churches: the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church with 5.5 million adherents, led by one of

About two-thirds of the way through that fine 1992 film, A League of Their Own , star catcher Dottie Hinson has had enough of the grind and is ready to quit. “It just got too hard,” she tells Jimmy Dugan, a former major league home run leader now relegated to managing the Rockford Peaches in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. “It’s supposed to be hard,” Dugan spits back. “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard … is what makes it great.” Some years

Just as the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 was a turning point for how our country treats innocent and vulnerable children in the womb, the...

Photo by Lothar Wolleh/ Wikicommons While I’ve never been able to remember the details of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), I’ve riffed on those monikers to denominate a major struggle over the meaning of the Second Vatican Council: the “War of the Conciliar Succession.” As I explained in my book, The Irony of Modern Catholic History , the War of the Conciliar Succession was not a brawl between stereotypical Cath

Pope Francis has repeatedly called attention to what he views as a growing rejection of the Second Vatican Council. Speaking to editors of European Jesuit journals on May 19, he related this view: “It is very difficult to see spiritual renewal using old-fashioned criteria. We need to renew our way of seeing reality, of evaluating it … Restorationism has come to gag the Council. The number of groups of ‘restorers’ — for example, in the United States there are many — is signif

A Ukrainian serviceman walks amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana/manhhai via flickr) CRACOW. Four and a half months after Russia invaded Ukraine on the Orwellian pretext of displacing a “Nazi” regime — a regime that enjoys a democratic legitimacy absent from Russia for two decades — what have we learned about, and from, the Russian way of war? We have learned that the Russian way of war is i

Photo: March For Life Prior to June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s most important civil rights decision was handed down on May 17, 1954. Then, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , the Court declared racially segregated public facilities unconstitutional, effectively reversing its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson , which upheld state-mandated segregation laws. Now, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court has effectively buried the gross errors o

picture of Ultrasound of baby in mother's womb. 24 week. “What is truth?” (Jn 18:28). Pilate speaks for many today, even as Truth itself stood before him. We as Catholics have accepted a basic definition of truth: the conformity of the mind to reality. We know the truth if we understand the nature of things, making proper judgments about what is and is not correct about the world and ourselves. Getting things right can even be a matter of life and death. Truth has been eclips

Photo by James Baca In December 2021 and May 2022, I had the pleasure of teaching a mini-course in Rome, exploring the life and thought of St. John Paul II. My students came from a cross-section of world Catholicism and offered a range of insights from different local Churches in our discussions. They were, however, uniformly surprised and disturbed by something I brought to their attention. Vatican II, I explained, had rightly called for a renewal of Catholic moral theology.

(Photo by Cari Devlin | Denver Catholic) It was heartbreaking to observe the behavior and paradoxical statements made for hours on end at...

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone at the altar during Mass in 2021. (Photo by Dennis Callahan/Archdiocese of San Francisco) What would...

The College of Cardinals celebrated a "Pro eligendo Pontifice" Mass, or the Mass for the election of a new pope, in St. Peter's Basilica on March 12, 2013 before entering the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave. (Photo by Jeffrey Bruno/CNA) Pope Francis’s recent announcement that he will create 21 new cardinals on August 27, 16 of whom would vote in a conclave held after that date, set off the usual flurry of speculations about the shape of the next papal election. Much of

Photo by Rock Li via Wikicommons If the Church is to continue to be Christ’s presence in the world, then part of that mission includes continuing his sacrifice. I recently wrote about the sacrificial witness of the priest in the face of modern oppression, giving examples such as Cardinal Nguyễn Văn Thuận and Servant of God Walter Ciszek. The reality, however, is that this witness continues right now throughout the world. Priests, religious and members of the lay faithful are

Given the rubbish about Ukraine spewed out by Russian propaganda trolls and regurgitated by foolish or ideologically besotted Americans, this year’s annual Summer Reading List will focus on serious books that explain the background, including the religious dimension, of a conflict that will shape Europe’s future — and ours. Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation , by Serhii Plokhy, tracks the imperialist chromosomes in Russia’s national genom

When Jesus began his public ministry, he started by choosing 12 men who became the Church’s first priests. The 12 Apostles are the...