Featured Photo by Julien Gaud on Unsplash I don’t know about you, but I find myself getting agitated pretty easily these days, often in ways that are not fitting for a believing Christian. I have been thinking a lot about the perils of living in a society which is becoming more and more overtly hostile to many of the norms that were simply taken for granted by the vast majority of our fellow citizens a mere 20 years ago. I’ll come back to that in a minute. Read a letter to

Featured image by Catholic News Agency According to the movie Love Story , “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Typical Hollywood fluff, you might say. Yet the best answer to that asininity was given by a Hollywood all-star, the late, great Charlton Heston. Asked the secret of what would eventually become his 64-year long marriage to Lydia, Chuck Heston replied, “Learning to say five words: ‘I’m sorry, I was wrong.’” It’s a lesson that seems especially hard to di

We buried my Mom last month. In the summer of last year, I first drove her to her new memory care facility. My heart was breaking. She...

All lives are consequential, for every human being is an idea of God’s, and everyone is a someone for whom the Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, entered history, suffered, died – and was raised from the dead to display within history a new, glorified humanity. Thus to every life, as Mrs. Loman noted in Death of a Salesman , “attention must be paid.” Or as C.S. Lewis reminded us in The Weight of Glory , “there are no ordinary people,” for everyone you m

Once, an editor of The Times newspaper asked G.K. Chesterton, “What is wrong with the world?” Chesterton, the great master of common sense and wit that he was, responded: “Dear Sir: I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.” “I am.” There is starting honesty and humility in recognizing that the world’s problems rest in the heart, and not ultimately in any of the great social, political, or economic forces on the outside. It is the problem within the heart that causes those exterior trou

Ten years ago, I began a most extraordinary Lent by walking up the Aventine Hill to the Basilica of Santa Sabina on the first day of the Roman station church pilgrimage – an eight-week journey that led to the book Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches , co-authored with my friend Elizabeth Lev and my son, Stephen. Liz Lev is the premier Anglophone art-and-architecture guide in the Eternal City, and her masterful descriptions of the Roman stational churches confirm the truth

When one is close to the events of history, it can be hard to have an objective perspective on their significance, but it does seem that...

Featured Photo by Robert Nyman on Unsplash Thirty years ago, on January 22, 1991, Pope John Paul II’s eighth encyclical, Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer), was published. In a pontificate so rich in ideas that its teaching has only begun to be digested, Redemptoris Missio stands out as a blueprint for the Catholic future. The vibrant parts of the world Church are living the vision of missionary discipleship to which the encyclical calls us. The dying parts

Featured image by Josh Applegate on Unsplash In his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia , Pope St. John Paul II invited Catholics to “rekindle” our sense of “Eucharistic amazement,” for “the Church draws her life from the Eucharist,” which “recapitulates the heart of the mystery of the Church” – Christ’s glorified, abiding presence with, in, and through his people, fulfilling his promise to remain with us “to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20). In the Eucharist, the Churc

Below is the full transcript of Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila’s homily he gave during the Respect Life Mass, celebrated Jan. 23 at the...

The list of grave issues that must be addressed during a future papal interregnum, and by the cardinal-electors in a conclave, continues to grow. The finances of the Holy See are arguably in worse shape than at any time since the papal interregnum of 1922; then, money had to be borrowed to pay for the conclave as Benedict XV had virtually bankrupted the Vatican in his efforts to aid refugees and POWs during World War I. Notwithstanding the reforms Pope Francis has put into p

Featured image by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz | Unsplash By Josh Evans Who should get the COVID-19 vaccine, and in what order? Does Catholic thinking have any wisdom to offer on this question? There is, unsurprisingly, no official Catholic “teaching” on the order of priority for vaccine distribution. The Church cannot have an explicit official teaching on each and every scenario. Rather, here is a situation where prudence must apply Catholic principles to the specific case. T

090120-N-0696M-204 Vice President Joe Biden takes the oath of office at the 56th Presidential Inauguration, Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009 (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/Released) For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:27-28). Catholics who take this apostolic

In these tumultuous days, everyone is asking the question: ‘What is the truth?’ Based on how they answer that question, and given the...

Featured image by Sławek | Wikipedia A wretched year came to a sorrowful end when Father Maciej Zięba, OP, died in his native Wrocław, Poland, on December 31. The birthplace of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wrocław was also the home of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who grew up there as Edith Stein when the city was known as Breslau. Unlike those great Christian witnesses, Maciej Zięba was not a martyr; but he, too, gave his life for Christ and the Church, and he bore more than h

TOPSHOT - The Peace Monument memorial is seen in front of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. - Donald Trump's...

Featured image by Josh Applegate on Unsplash In our lifetime, there has never been so much expectation for a new year, hoping that we can all turn a corner and leave a difficult year in the past. So much is out of our control, yet there is one thing that we can do to allow our lives to be shaped by the one who is truly in control. Our lives will be better this year if we give more time to God in prayer. But what is prayer really about? I found it startling, when reading th

In 2007, the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean completed their fifth general conference with a final report, known from the Brazilian city where they met as the “Aparecida Document.” Its principal authors included Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, then the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Thanks to the efforts of the future pope and others, the Aparecida Document remains an exemplary description of what it means to be the Church of the New Evangelization – and not only

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 19: Pro-life activists try to block the sign of a pro-choice activist during the 2018 March for Life January 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. Activists gathered in the nation's capital for the annual event to protest the anniversary of the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in 1973. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) One of Dr. LeRoy Carhart’s “Clinics for Abortion & Reproductive Excellence” – named to yield the Orwellian acronym CARE

Christmas is more than a birthday party; it is the manifestation of the newborn king of heaven and earth. In the early Church, the Epiphany of Christ, the manifestation of his divinity to the world, unveiled the meaning of Christmas. In fact, the 12th Night of Christmas, Epiphany Eve, culminated the celebration, with the largest gatherings, feasts, and dances happening that night. The birth of Christ was not complete without the Wise Men, representatives of all the nations, p