Fifteen months ago, it looked as if Cardinal George Pell might spend his 80th birthday in prison. A malicious trolling expedition by the police department of the State of Victoria […]

The Year of St. Joseph points us to Jesus’ adoptive father, Joseph, as the essential model for fathers. Joseph not only manifests genuine masculinity, he also images God’s own fatherhood, as Pope Francis makes clear in his apostolic letter, Patris Corde: “In his relationship to Jesus, Joseph […]

It was a two-week whirlwind that changed my life forever, that first visit of mine to Poland in June 1991. Looking back on it, I’m reminded of something H.L. Mencken […]

It’s now the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but for native Baltimoreans of a certain vintage (like me) it is, was, and […]

 One of the adornments of American Catholicism turned 90 on May 21: Dr.  Paul R. McHugh, longtime head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and a healer after the heart of […]

The Church has had a rocky relationship with the modern world, to say the least. It’s all the more difficult that contemporary culture arose largely in opposition to the Christian culture of the […]

On May 7, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, SJ, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent a letter to Archbishop José Gomez, president of the United States Conference […]

The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (often referenced by its Latin title, Gaudium et Spes) is typically regarded as the most “progressive” of the […]

Where would we be without our mothers? We wouldn’t be! Father Gregory Cleveland, OMV, shares a beautiful quote from Cardinal Mindszenty on the importance of motherhood: “The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the […]

I claim no expertise in climate science. I do claim a certain competence in detecting spin in the media; for I’m a card-carrying member of that clan, as I’ve committed […]

Last month was my Mom’s 89th birthday. And the three-month anniversary of her death.  I have written about Mom’s death, but I haven’t yet written about Mom. I have wanted to somehow […]

Unfortunately forgotten in most U.S. Catholic circles today, Cardinal Albert Gregory Meyer, archbishop of Milwaukee from 1953 to 1958 and archbishop of Chicago from 1958 to 1965, was one of […]