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When the Means Undermine the End
An introductory course in moral theology will include that the end does not justify the means. It’s a basic Catholic principle. Doing a wicked thing for a good end...
The Smiling Archbishop of New York
More than sixteen years ago, on the morning of his installation Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, an ebullient (when was he not?) Archbishop Timothy Dolan greeted...
Our Lady of This Particular Place
It’s a Marian week on the Catholic calendar, with three feasts observed in five days: Immaculate Conception (December 8), Our Lady of Loreto (December 10), and Our Lady of...
Two Takes on Pope Leo
Already we have had an array of first-hundred-days analyses of Pope Leo XIV, as though the first American-born pope could be judged like an American president...
How Much Does Dilexi Te Reflect Leo XIV’s Thinking?
"Slogans do not lift people out of poverty,” Pope Leo XIV said in his address to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, exactly a week after his first major document was released. Dilexi Te...
The Two Leos
Pope Leo XIV has explained that his choice of regnal name is an homage to Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903), the architect of the modern papacy. It was Leo who...
The Cardinal Electors, Then and Now
Does a conclave elect the man the Holy Spirit desires to lead the Church? History teaches that sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s view was that...
The World’s Spiritual Director
Pope Francis died early Easter Monday, less than twelve hours after the last evening Masses had been offered in Roman parishes. On Easter Sunday evening, the assigned Gospel passage...
Pope Francis and “Selective Indignation”
Last month, the chief rabbi of Rome accused Pope Francis of “selective indignation” in his comments about the Israel-Hamas war. “A pope cannot divide the world into children and...
Blue Bloods and the Power of Fatherhood
The long-running CBS series Blue Bloods had its series finale on December 13, after fourteen seasons on the air and nearly three hundred episodes, which aired on Fridays. In...
Pope Francis and the Catholic Sensitivity to Jews
How should Catholics speak about Jews in general, and Israel in particular? That question was raised anew by a recent interview book in which Pope Francis commented on the...
Pope Francis and Catholic Sensitivity to Jews
How should Catholics speak about Jews in general, and Israel in particular? That question was raised anew by a recent interview book in which Pope Francis commented on the...
Put Not Your Trust in Princes
As the presidential campaign winds down, the Trump-Vance ticket is ramping up warnings of Christian persecution if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election. “The radical left is not...
The Infernal Synod on Synodality
As the three-year synodal process on synodality for a synodal Church limps into its final three weeks of meetings in Rome, even poking fun at it has become a...
Easter and the Eclipse
Were you there when the sun refused to shine? So our choir sang on Good Friday during the veneration of the Cross. The Reproaches are sung first, but more...
