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Cathedrals and us
The Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the nation’s capital is a magnificent Neo-Gothic structure, based on 14th-century English models, that calls itself “Washington National Cathedral”: a...
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Russia’s sacrilegious war on Ukraine
Today’s Russian Orthodox leadership is a theological, moral, and pastoral train wreck. U.S. foreign policy can’t fix that. Nonetheless, those responsible for devising U.S. foreign policy should...
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Manners, methods, and greatness
Browsing Footprints in Time, the memoirs of Winston Churchill’s longtime private secretary, John Colville, I found a tale from eighty years ago with a lesson for American public life today. The...
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Catholics, Hippocrates, and reforming American medicine
I am the odd man out in a family of medical folk. My maternal grandfather was a physician; his daughter, my mother, was a medical technologist; my mother-in-law, a nurse. My brother is a physician; so...
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Joe Biden: When The Last Hurrah met Catholic Lite
Four years ago, this column praised the courage of Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), for his Inauguration Day letter to President...
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From Doubting Thomas to Doubting Peter?
Ralph Fiennes is a remarkable actor. And if he wins an Academy Award for his brilliant performance in Conclave, this section of his masterfully delivered homily to the College of Cardinals, of which he...
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Stacked decks, “Conversation in the Spirit,” and the Catholic future
Various cultures — English, Turkish, Chinese — claim to have invented the maxim, “The fish rots from the head down” (a favorite in Your Nation’s Capital during the unhappy years when the...
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Jubilee 2025: New Year’s resolutions and resources
Jubilee 2025 began on Christmas Eve 2024, with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s in Rome, and will conclude on January 6, 2026, when that door of the Vatican basilica is closed. The theme of...
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Jimmy and the Patriarch, at Christmas
The post-Christmas liturgical calendar may seem a bit Scrooge-like, as the child-centered, innocent joy of the Nativity is quickly followed by three feasts of a different, even sobering, character....
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Embassy Vatican: Some Demystifications
A change of presidential administrations typically leads to changes in U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad, especially at the ambassadorial level. This, in turn, leads to speculations, some of them zany,...
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Books for Christmas – 2024
A friend told me recently that bookstores were making something of a comeback. I hope that’s true, because browsing bookstores is one of life’s great pleasures. (For the ultimate such experience, visit...
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“Luce,” mascot of dumbed-down Catholicism
During his years as professor of fundamental theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella was often cited by American seminarians as their favorite professor – an...
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An Open Letter to J.D. Vance
Dear Senator Vance: As Americans celebrate a unique national holiday, the origins of which remind us that our democracy is an experiment in ordered liberty “under God,” let me wish you and your family...
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A great Christian witness, too little known in the West
The Venerable Andrei Sheptytsky, who died eighty years ago on November 1, 1944, was one of 20th century Catholicism’s outstanding figures, whose remarkable life and heroic ministry as leader of the...
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The continuing scandal of the Vatican’s China policy
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 2018 agreement with the People’s Republic of China, which allows...
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Taking the Risk of Freedom
Thirty-five years ago, the son of a great historian helped make history when he asked the question that triggered the demolition of the most grotesquely expressive artifact of the Cold War. My friend...
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Hard times a’ comin’, whoever wins
Shortly after taking office, British foreign secretary David Lammy described the “nature crisis” as a greater threat than terrorism because the nature crisis is “more fundamental,” “systemic,”...
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Meditation on a Roman pizza
ROME–Pizza in the Eternal City tends to exemplify a proposition I have long defended: what crossed the Atlantic going west was usually improved in the process. I like Roman pizza, as I like Rome, but I...
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Crossing the Threshold of Hope after thirty years
On October 20, 1994, something unprecedented in the modern history of the papacy took place: the reigning pope published a book that was not an act of the papal magisterium but rather a personal...
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Indifference is irresponsible
I can understand why many Americans seem dispirited about world affairs. Things are indeed a mess. What I cannot understand, however, is the electorate’s seeming indifference to the global mess: an...
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