Pope Francis

Healing Through Repentance

A response to Rocco Buttiglione’s reading of Amoris Laetitia. Continue Reading »

Does Liberal Catholicism
Have a Future?

Plus: Pokémon Go and American Insecurity. First Things Podcast, Episode 2. Continue Reading »

Archbishop Chaput Leads the Way

Healing people’s wounds means counseling them with the love of Christ, but never misleading them with erroneous teachings or allowing them to abuse Holy Communion. Continue Reading »

Pope Francis in Armenia

Last weekend, Pope Francis made an apostolic journey to Armenia, a small, landlocked country of three million in the South Caucasus, bordering Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The official motto of his journey was “Visit to the First Christian Nation,” a reference to Armenia’s being the . . . . Continue Reading »

Bystanders to Genocide

“Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?”
—Adolf Hitler, August 22, 1939

What Francis Forgets About Marriage

The Church affirms that human beings are by nature suited to contract marriage, and she teaches that Christian couples can call upon the graces of the sacrament of Matrimony in living out the marriages they contract. Against such an ancient and affirming tradition, Francis’s assertion that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null” shocked both common sense and Catholic sensibility. Continue Reading »

Francis's Improv Theology

Francis reminds us that the Eucharist is not “a prize for the perfect.” But marriage, apparently, is. Continue Reading »

Can Only Theologians Get Married?

If the sincere exchange of vows doesn’t make their marriage valid, what does? Must all sacramentally valid marriages resemble my friends', beginning only after a few years of theological study, during a Mass set to music by Mozart? Continue Reading »

There Aren't “Two Popes” in any Way, Shape, or Form

Life, even Catholic life, is full of ambiguities, but some things either are or aren’t. It’s a ball or a strike. It’s a Toyota or a Ford. You’re baptized or you aren’t. The papacy would seem to be one of these you-are-or-you-aren’t realities. According to the law of the Church, a man . . . . Continue Reading »

Who Lost Christian Europe?

As frustration mounts about the decline of Christian Europe, some have begun to point fingers. Among their latest targets is Pope Francis. Continue Reading »