(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...

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0) No one who has worked in Washington for more than four decades, as I have, can possibly imagine Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., as one of the sharper knives in the drawer. Even in the retrospect of 31 years, his attempt to instruct future-Justice Clarence Thomas in natural law theory during Thomas’s confirmation hearings is still cringe-inducing. He self-destructed in several presidential campaigns because of verbal gaffes (and p

Photo by Wesley Tingey via Unsplash We attended a prayer vigil, and prayed the rosary at night. We hoped for good news, while also preparing ourselves for the worst. And, in the end, there was good news: a medical miracle, the likes of which I (and quite a number of doctors and nurses, I am told) had never personally seen before. The baby of a dear friend had been healed by Jesus, brought back from the brink of death by the God who conquered death. There would surely be a lo

Within this multiyear Eucharistic Revival, we should not only foster devotion to the sacrament we recognize as the source and summit of our faith, but we must also remove the obstacles that keep us from benefiting from this “medicine of immortality” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, “Letter to the Ephesians,” c. 100AD). We believe that we have found the true medicine that recreates us, transforming us into what we consume, the very body of our Creator, and, therefore, must oppose all

Let us stipulate that the terms “international community” and “rules-based international order” have often been reduced to meaningless...

For months, the clergy and faithful of the archdiocese have been discussing and praying about how we are called to live out our faith in...

Writing my new book, To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books), afforded me the welcome opportunity to dig into the Council’s 16 texts and the many fine commentaries on them. It also made me ponder why the Council was necessary. That question is often raised today by young Catholics who, unsettled by the excessive ecclesiastical air turbulence over the past decade and generally ill-informed about the pre-conciliar Church, imagine that everything in

In the summer of 2020, the world watched the collective eruption of violence, anger, division and hatred in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. As tragic and unjust as the murder of Mr. Floyd was, what unfolded in its wake seemed to be something more. As that summer went on it became a violent expression of so many divisive forces in society. The polar nature of our time was on full display: COVID, lockdowns, government powers and mask mandates were just a few of the issu

Due its divisiveness, it can be tempting to avoid the topic of politics altogether within the Church and instead focus on the seemingly less controversial issues of faith and spirituality. To avoid politics, however, would not be Christian. This is not because the Kingdom of God seeks to set itself up as a political regime, as this would vastly diminish its eternal power. Rather, Christians cannot avoid politics because faith cannot be restrained within any confines, politica

Sixty years after its solemn opening on October 11, 1962, is there anything new to be said about the Second Vatican Council? I think there is. And I hope to have said it in To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II , which has just been published by Basic Books. Reading a great historical event is a matter of perspective as much as a matter of facts. Some churchmen today “read” the Council as having effected a “paradigm shift” in Catholic self-understanding, altho

His Eminence, Mario Cardinal Grech General Secretary Synod of Bishops 00120 Vatican City Your Eminence: The “National Synthesis of the...

Americans have many reasons to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II, one of the few truly noble figures on the contemporary world stage. We were deeply touched by her decision to have the band play our national anthem at the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace the day after 9/11. We were tickled by her puckish sense of humor: while visiting USS Constitution in Boston Harbor during the Bicentennial, the royal eye noticed that some of Old Ironsides’ ancient guns bore t

Vittore Carpaccio, Saint Augustine in His Study, 1507. On the 28th of August, we celebrated the feast day of the great St. Augustine, the anniversary of the day he died in the year 430 A.D. His name providentially points to his august status in the Church as one of the greatest theologians in her history. We love him for another reason, however. More than any other figure in history, we can follow Augustine’s inner life, tracing the steps of his conversion, thinking through h

Photo by Yandry Fernández Perdomo via Cathopic At the “information meeting” of the College of Cardinals this past Aug. 29-30, there was considerable agreement that evangelization is Catholicism’s prime imperative for the 21st century — a consensus understandably gratifying to the author of a 2013 book with the then-provocative title, Evangelical Catholicism . Within that consensus, however, serious questions remain to be resolved. Surveying the world Catholic scene today, and

(Photo: Chris Liverani / Unsplash) Have you ever prayed and wondered if God actually hears you? Have you ever felt like you aren’t...

Photo by Matías Medina via Cathopic There was considerable excitement in some quarters this summer when Pope Francis appointed three women as members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, which makes recommendations to the pope for episcopal appointments in much of Latin-rite Catholicism. Whether this innovation will make any significant difference at the final stage of a long, complex process remains to be seen; given the byzantine ways of the Roman Curia (and its boys clu

“If we achieve great things outside of ourselves, and the achieving of them does not effect any change or development in ourselves, we have done nothing. Life’s purpose is to purify us, not gratify us .” So says Father Edward Leen reflecting on “the triumph of failure,” the way in which God’s work in the soul, and correspondingly in the world, cannot be judged on the surface (see his book In the Likeness of Christ ). Judged rightly, Leen tells us that “there is nothing so sad