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Candace Owens speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) was “an Italian-born businessman who was noted for his philanthropy and support of Jewish rights.” In the England to which he was brought as a child, he became an investor of such genius that he retired from the investmen

Front page of the Baltimore Sun on October 10, 1966, after the Baltimore Orioles won the 1966 World Series. (Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) I am not usually given to apocalypticism, but I think I got the imagery exactly right when, in 2001, I called my brother and described the ruins left by the demolition of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium as akin to “the abomination of desolation” (cf. Daniel 9:27, 11:31, 12:11). What had once been our youthful field of dreams, wh

(Photo: Pexels) The now-ubiquitous terms “reproductive health” and “reproductive freedom” have contributed mightily to a slaughter of the innocents in these United States. The death toll from that massacre is now greater than the estimated 60 million civilian lives erased by area bombing, genocide, starvation, and disease during World War II. If the victor of D-Day, Dwight D. Eisenhower, could write of that bloodletting that “the loss of lives that could have been creatively

Route 132 in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Québec. (Photo: Bouchecl via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) Route 132 along the north shore of Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula offers one of the most scenic vistas in North America. To one’s left, the extraordinary St. Lawrence River can create the illusion of driving along the seashore, for the width of the riverine estuary is such that the opposite shoreline, also in Québec, is often beyond the horizon. But does any seaside drive offer the Gasp

Rescue workers dig through rubble from the destroyed World Trade Center in Manhattan, NY. (Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) Several weeks after Islamist terrorists hijacked four planes, wreaking havoc in lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon in the name of deranged religious convictions, I was at dinner in the papal apartment with John Paul II and three of his closest associates. The mood was somber, which was unusual at that table. The pope’s hope for a “new springt

The Speyer Cathedral, Dom Speyer in German. (Photo: Sail over via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0) Speyer is a charming city on the west bank of the Rhine River. Its splendid medieval core is dominated by a magnificent 11th-century cathedral, the resting place of German emperors for three hundred years and one of Europe’s greatest expressions of Romanesque architecture. (For fans of British royalty, the future King Edward VII was introduced to his future wife, Alexandra, in th

(Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) In his June 2 Wall Street Journal column, Jason L. Riley noted a disturbing trend in our American moment: “According to the Department of Labor, 1 in 3 men were neither working nor looking for a job in April.” That sad state of affairs is multi-causal, to be sure. The hard fact, though, as Jason Riley argued and Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrated in his book Men Without Work, “is that the long-term rise in male joblessness doesn’t ste

(Photo: Unsplash) A 2025 YouGov poll revealed some interesting factoids about Americans’ reading habits — or lack thereof. 40% of us didn’t read a book last year. About a quarter of the country read one to four books in 2025, and 13% clocked in at between five and nine books in all formats (print, electronic, audio). 19% of us did 82% of America’s book reading. So let’s up our game. Herewith, some suggestions for your own reading pleasure this summer, which I hope you’ll pass

A view of the monument to Vladimir the Baptist and the pedestrian bridge in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo: Unsplash) For months now, I have been receiving alarming, early-morning text messages from Major-Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halyč, leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The texts are typically sent after this heroic churchman has spent the entire night in a bomb shelter (as he has done many, many times over the past four and a half years), and they include a

Robert Louis Wilken. (Photo: Fair Use) Robert Louis Wilken — radical Christian disciple, devoted husband and father, distinguished patristics scholar, elegant writer, serious baseball guy — died on June 6, a few months short of age 90. Curiously enough, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of this longtime friend and colleague is a pop-quiz Q&A I heard years ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Robert was an adornment of Mr. Jefferson’s university for many years

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States on September 17, 1787, by Howard Chandler Christy, c. 1940. (Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) As we mark the national semiquincentennial on July 4, we might well reflect on Benjamin Franklin’s answer to Elizabeth Willing Powel, when the elderly sage left the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the Philadelphia matron demanded, “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have we got, a republic, or a monarchy?” To which

The United States Supreme Court is currently made up of nine justices. Front row: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito and Elena Kagan. Back row: Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Photo: Fred Schilling, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) Article III of the Constitution, which establishes the Supreme Court, is the shortest of the three articles th

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X, in 1981. (Photo: Antonisse, Marcel / Anefo, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 nl) The Holy See has declared that, if the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) proceeds with the ordination of bishops in July without a papal mandate, those involved in these illicit ordinations are automatically (latae sententiae) excommunicated — that is, excommunicated by their own acts. One may, indeed one should, hope that it does not

Jimmy Lai in 2019. (Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons) At his May summit in Beijing, President Trump made an effort to convince Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release Jimmy Lai from his imprisonment in Hong Kong. Jimmy, whom I am honored to call a friend, is a 78-year-old diabetic who has been in solitary confinement some seven hundred days longer than the United States was engaged in World War II, and is now serving a twenty-year sentence for threatening Chinese natio

Pope St. John Paul II speaks during World Youth Day 1993 in Denver. (Photo by James Baca/Denver Catholic Register) When he was elected Bishop of Rome on October 16, 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła had a rather limited experience of the Catholic Church in the United States. He had met American churchmen at the Second Vatican Council, and a few of them visited Poland in the ensuing years. The Cracovian cardinal had made two visits to the United States, one during the national bice

With the help of the Holy Spirit, traditionally depicted in the form of a dove (also a symbol of peace), we can create meaningful peace that will last. (Photo: Unsplash) Repetition, it’s said, can be the mother of learning. So, in light of recent Catholic debates about the pursuit of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, permit me to reprise, with slight adjustments, parts of a column from twenty-four years ago. The points I made then seem to me as salient today as when I f

The defeat of an "assisted dying" bill in the United Kingdom is a welcome win for the culture of life. (Photo: Unsplash) Good news not being thick on the ground these days, I’m delighted to note some very good news from the mother country: on April 24, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill failed to gain passage in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, thus ending, for now, the efforts to legalize assisted suicide in England and Wales. A month earlier, the Scottish Parl

Pope St. John Paul II speaks at a gathering during World Youth Day 1993 in Denver. (Photo by James Baca/Denver Catholic Register) Thirty-five years ago, Pope John Paul II issued his most developed social encyclical, Centesimus Annus; its title signaled the author’s intention to honor the centenary of Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which launched the modern papal social magisterium. Yet Centesimus Annus, while paying due homage to Leo XIII’s enduring insights, was

Sts. Philip and James Church in Baltimore, MD, where George Weigel was baptized 75 years ago. (Photo by Father Lawrence Lew, OP, Creative Commons via Flickr) Three-quarters of a century ago, on April 29, 1951, I was baptized by Father Thomas Love, SJ, in Baltimore’s Church of Saints Philip and James. Old Scratch must have thoroughly sunken his claws into my infant self; according to family tradition, I sent up such a howl when he was ousted by water and the Holy Spirit that m

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich in November 2018. (Photo by Olivier LPB via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0). Your Eminence: In an article recently published by a major German Catholic website, you suggested that the question of whether the Church can ordain women has not been definitively settled: “I cannot imagine how a Church can continue to exist in the long run if half of God’s people suffer because they have no access to ordained ministry.” Putting aside for a moment t