It’s a rare occasion when the word “unprecedented” can be used for a Church whose history extends over two millennia. Yet something unprecedented happened in the Polish village of … more

“Pope Francis has just given the Vatican his Ratzinger,” declared one July 2 headline; “Pope Francis Finds His Ratzinger,” announced another, four days later. Both quickie … more

On first encountering Father Victor B. Galeone at Baltimore’s St. Paul Latin High School in September 1965, my freshman classmates and I didn’t imagine we were meeting the future bishop … more

Few of the following qualify as “beach reading;” they all qualify as good reading.  In graduate school, I was informed that there was no such thing as “biblical … more

A few days after Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s appointment as head of a Vatican “peace mission” to “help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine” (as Vatican News put it), a … more

In a recent article on the social doctrine of John Paul II in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, Father Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi, SJ, had this to say about one facet of John … more

Three days before Christmas 1952 and a month before his inauguration as the 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the Freedoms Foundation at the Waldorf-Astoria in New … more

On March 31, the bishops of France announced that they would petition the Holy See for permission to open a beatification cause for Father Henri de Lubac, SJ. Whatever the outcome of the cause, … more

Cambridge historian Richard Rex has provocatively proposed that Catholicism today is embroiled in the third great crisis of its bimillennial history. The first crisis was the fierce, Church-dividing … more

On April 11, 1963, John XXIII issued the encyclical Pacem in Terris, a powerful call for a world in which there were neither victims nor executioners that cemented the pontiff’s reputation as … more

Once upon a time, before the Cuisinart of advanced educational thinking reduced history, geography, and civics to the tasteless gruel of “social studies,” humanity’s story was … more

In the first chapter of Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy quoted an exasperated Congressman, John Steven McGroarty, who wrote an irritating constituent in these neatly acerbic terms: “One of … more

The unanimous decision by Australia’s High Court to quash Cardinal George Pell’s convictions on charges of “historic sexual abuse” and acquit him of those crimes was entirely … more

Perspective is at least as important when reading the signs of the times as it is in landscape painting. And so, in this autumn of our Catholic discontent, I was particularly grateful to hear from an … more

Papal approbation being no bad thing, I was delighted to learn that Pope Francis, in a homily a few weeks ago, had suggested that his congregants learn the date of their baptisms and celebrate it—which is precisely what I have been proposing to audiences around the country this past year, when discussing my book, Evangelical Catholicism. more

Twenty-five years ago, on Jan. 27, 1989, a joint statement from the communist government of Poland, the Solidarity trade union, and the Catholic Church announced a national “Roundtable” to discuss the country’s future, including major structural issues of political and economic reform. The Roundtable began the following month; basic agreements were reached in April; partially-free elections, swept by Solidarity candidates, were held in June; and in September, a Solidarity leader, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister since World War II. more

A good friend habitually refers to the Wall Street Journal as his “favorite Catholic newspaper”—a bit of whimsy not without foundation, given the openness of the Journal’s op-ed pages to serious Catholic argument on numerous issues. But just as Homer occasionally nods, so does America’s best newspaper. And on Jan. 2, the Journal nodded, big-time, in this description of why Pope Francis was one of the “People to Watch” in 2014: more

My fascination with Ukraine began in 1984, during a sabbatical year at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. There, one of the first friends I made among my fellow Fellows was Dr. Bohdan Bociurkiw, a Ukrainian-Canadian professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. We first connected through a mutual interest in religious freedom behind the iron curtain; within a few weeks, Bohdan was giving me private tutorials in the history and culture of his native land, including an in-depth introduction to the story of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). more

The flurry of instabooks published shortly after the election of Pope Francis didn’t shed much light on the formation, character and interests of Jorge Mario Bergoglio or the likely trajectory of his pontificate. Now comes something serious and useful: “Pope Francis: Our Brother, Our Friend — Personal Recollections About the Man Who Became Pope,” edited by Alejandro Bermúdez and published by Ignatius Press. In 20 interviews, longtime friends and associates of the pope “from the ends of the earth” give readers real insight into the radical Christian disciple who is leading the Church “into the deep” of the new evangelization, following the call of John Paul II in 2001. more