TRIGGER WARNING: This column will speak well of Paul Ryan, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, and compare him favorably to...

ROME.  Amidst all the Sturm und Drang of Synod-2015, something genuinely new in the life of the Church began, and it shouldn’t escape our...

ROME. During Synod-2015, I’ve been reading John Martin Robinson’s Cardinal Consalvi: 1757-1824 , a biography of Pope Pius VII’s secretary...

The idea that Catholics should be allowed to remarry and receive communion did not begin with the letter signed by Cardinal Kasper and...

ROME. The great Piazza San Pietro is a five minute walk from where I’m living during Synod-2015. About three-quarters of the Square is...

ROME. Since Pope Francis announced that two Synods would examine the contemporary crisis of marriage and the family and work to devise...

He came to America and encountered us in the streets, schools and historic places where we gathered. Pope Francis’ first visit to the...

The XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family begins with Mass in St. Peter’s on October 4. No synod in modern...

When I processed into St. Mary Magdalene church, I was filled with gratitude for the six Sisters of Life who sat in two pews toward the...

It was revealed this week that, for the first time in its history, Harvard University, which had been founded for religious purposes and...

I was 20 years old when I began using oral contraception.  About to be married and unsure of how pregnancy and children ought to fit with...

Sitting at a writing-desk in the White House on December 11, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt was an unhappy camper. In previous...

The history of popes in these United States is full of surprises. And one of them, to begin at the beginning, includes the little-known...

Seventy-five years ago, on Sunday, September 15, 1940, Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine were driven from the prime minister’s...

We agonize, we hunger and we thirst for every couple that comes to us for marriage coaching.  Spouses call with trepidation, send emails...

Some time ago I received advice about a stressful work situation that today remains one of my favorite tools. “The main thing is to keep...

As I write this column, a county clerk from Kentucky, Kim Davis, is behind bars for insisting that she should not be required to obey an...

In 2003, Elizabeth Maguire, publisher of Basic Books, made a proposal: I should write Letters to a Young Catholic as part of a series...

At Christmas 1969, Professor Joseph Ratzinger gave a radio talk with the provocative title, “What Will the Future Church Look Like?” (You...

This week I want to share with you two important themes that have come to me in prayer: the need for prayer and reparation for the...