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...

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

Every time in history has its trials, but the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is one that stands apart because its impact has been so...

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

Detail from the cover of "Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World" by Tara Isabella Burton. (Photo courtesy of Word on Fire)...

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

Paradiso, Gustave Dore, 1868. As I write this, we are on the eve of the first anniversary of my mother’s death. The last in a year of...

Photo by Photo Nic on Unsplash How is wine related to charity? Although we may think of consuming wine as something simply pleasant and enjoyable, Jesus used it as an image of his sacrifice. He asked his disciples, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” (Mt 20:22). This cup of his passion took shape during the Last Supper, when we offered his own blood to establish the new covenant. He then hinted that he would continue to share this cup after his Passion: “I sha

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

(Photo: Adobe Stock) Have you ever googled “percentage of people who dread the holidays”? It’s kind of fascinating. The numbers range,...