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Jimmy Lai's 2025 Christmas card featured a moving confession of faith amid suffering. (Courtesy photo) In a 1974 address to a group of lay Catholics, Pope Paul VI noted that "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses" — an acute observation he later reiterated in his spiritual testament, the 1975 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi  (Announcing the Gospel). That witnesses can be m

(Photo: Unsplash) Twenty years ago, I published a small book, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God. It enjoyed a fair sale, got translated into French, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, and Hungarian, and was named a FOREIGN AFFAIRS  Bestseller. In it, I argued that Europe was experiencing a crisis of “civilizational morale,” evident in sclerotic governmental bureaucracies, an unwillingness to contribute appropriately to the defense of the

Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerard van Honthorst, c. 1622. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) The Roman Missal provides four distinct Mass texts for the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord: the “Vigil Mass,” the “Mass During the Night,” the “Mass at Dawn,” and the “Mass During the Day.” The gospel readings for these Christmas Masses teach important lessons at Christmas 2025. The Vigil Mass gospel, Matthew 1:1-25, includes the evangelist’s “genealogy of Jesus Chr

German Bishops at Mass in the Papal Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls during their visit in Rome, Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA) When it was first published in 1993, Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical on the reform of Catholic moral theology, Veritatis Splendor  (The Splendor of Truth), dealt a severe blow to the pride of many German theologians, who had long thought themselves the cutting edge of Catholic intellectual life. Indeed, within a year of the encycl

USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio speaks at the bishops’ spring meeting, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (Photo: Courtesy of the USCCB) Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste for shocking people via undiplomatic language. In a conversation with the great historian John Tracy Ellis, Curley, who had had his share of tussles with the Vatican, once blurted out, “Rome will use you, abuse you, and then throw you

St. Michael's Square in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo: Unsplash) Prior to the “Revolution of Dignity” that began on the Maidan, Kyiv’s Independence Square, in late 2013 and eventually gave birth to the country that has amazed the world with its courage, resilience, and ingenuity since the Russian invasion of February 2022, ecumenical dialogue and interreligious cooperation were not prominent features of the Ukrainian cultural landscape. The Maidan experience changed all that. An ecum

(Photo by Lothar Wolleh / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0) Sixty years ago, on October 28, 1965, the Second Vatican Council adopted, and Pope Paul VI promulgated, the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, known by the first words in the official Latin text as Nostra Aetate  (In Our Age). I chart Nostra Aetate ’s sometimes rocky passage through Vatican II in To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II .  Suffice it to note here that

The UK Parliament has debated "assisted dying" for months, the latest affront to life and a clear misunderstanding of compassion. (Photo: Unsplash) The “Mother of Parliaments” — that’s the one in London — has been embroiled for months in a debate over “assisted dying,” which is euphemized elsewhere under other Orwellian monikers: “Medical Assistance in Dying,” “Physician Assisted Suicide,” “Physician Assisted Dying,” and so forth. The bill legalizing this odious practice narr

George Weigel, syndicated Denver Catholic columnist, addresses a group at The Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization during...

(Photo: Unsplash) The University of Colorado Boulder will host a significant public conversation this September, bringing together two...

RFK Jr. at his hearing to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. (Photo: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons) The nomination of Robert F....

The Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Unsplash) The Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the nation’s...

(Photo: Unsplash) Today’s Russian Orthodox leadership is a theological, moral, and pastoral train wreck. U.S. foreign policy can’t fix...

Winston Churchill (Photo: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons) Browsing Footprints in Time, the memoirs of Winston Churchill’s longtime...

(Photo: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons) Four years ago, this column praised the courage of Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles,...

In the annals of historical boorishness, it would be hard to find something more egregious than the Holy See’s timing as it renewed its...

Thirty-five years ago, the son of a great historian helped make history when he asked the question that triggered the demolition of the...

Shortly after taking office, British foreign secretary David Lammy described the “nature crisis” as a greater threat than terrorism...

ROME–Pizza in the Eternal City tends to exemplify a proposition I have long defended: what crossed the Atlantic going west was usually...

On October 20, 1994, something unprecedented in the modern history of the papacy took place: the reigning pope published a book that was...