What’s a Remarried Catholic to Do?

On a hot day in Rome not long ago, I crossed St. Peter’s Square, paused beneath a curving flank of Bernini’s colonnade, and continued to a Swiss Guard standing at a wrought-iron gate, the Porta Cavalleggeri. He examined my credentials, handed them back, and saluted. I hadn’t expected the gesture, and almost returned the salute, but then realized it was intended for a cardinal waddling into the Vatican behind me.

To write a biography of Avery Dulles is to enter the vitriolic conflict over interpretations of the legacy of Vatican II, the current state and future prospects of Catholicism in the United States, and the health of Catholic theology. There is much to be said for Carey’s way of organizing the myriad events and scholarly works in the life of a very public intellectual. Yet it finally fails to capture the complexity of the figure that emerges in the pages of this book.

A Tribute to Gregory Baum

Must the church always call evil plainly by its proper name, whatever the consequences? Can her priests keep silent in the face of abomination, in the hope of rescuing something positive from chaos, or so that tyranny may bear down a little less cruelly on those who must endure it? Those were the dilemmas confronting Eugenio Pacelli, pope during the Second World War, a diplomat who found himself sitting in the seat of prophecy.

Before I began researching a book about Francis, I’d had the idea that, given his powerful sense of God’s presence, he was always carefree and happy. The truth is more complicated: Francis’s life was encumbered by dark shadows, to the point that he experienced long periods of anguishing separation from God.

Finding good resources for adult faith formation isn't easy. For years, the field has been wide open for someone who could combine actual substantive content with an engaging yet adult-worthy teaching style. Into this breach comes Catholicism.

How a rectory saved me

The trouble with the new Roman Missal

The liturgical wars heat up

How not to write about the cardinal & his time

The case for the Vatican diplomatic corps

Make it humble & make it persuasive

An excerpt from Jennifer Haigh's new novel, Faith.

To attribute sympathy or “solidarity” to God is to make him seem less involved with us than, as Creator, he must be.

If George Weigel had lived in nineteenth-century France, he would have been termed an ultramontane—one who looked beyond the Alps to Rome. Instead, he looks from Washington to Rome.

A homilist's education

Garry Wills's 'Outside Looking In'

It was in Rome during the heady days of Vatican II. There was to be a meeting of the Consilium, the commission for the reform of the liturgy, where the subject of deaconesses was raised—and not one woman was in the room.

Lisa Sowle Cahill’s middle way

Benedict & condoms

If we forget the Bible, in what sense are we Christian?

 ‘Three Faiths’ at New York’s Public Library

Raimundo Panikkar's long theological journey

“Nothing changes” is one definition of ritual. And top to bottom the Mass is still a ritual, with little room for deviation. The priest now does a few things he did not do before Vatican II, but the list of changes is quite small and the essence of the liturgy is unaltered. Nothing in the Mass is likely to take you by surprise.

What was Pius XII's opinion of the Jews?

A review of The Divine Sister, a loving sendup of convent pictures 

Why some devout Catholics are leaving the church

Letter from Sierra Leone

Could the vogue for Herbert McCabe portend a renaissance of liberation theology and the revolutionary spirit of the ’60s? His admirers have not linked his Catholic faith and his socialist politics, and McCabe himself denied an intrinsic connection. Still, there exists a bond between his theology and his radicalism, a bond particularly worth examining today. 

Way back in the twentieth century, when I decided to pursue doctoral work in theology, I never imagined that I would one day teach in an Oxford college. Neither did I imagine that John Henry Newman, of all people, would come to loom large in my day-to-day life.

The story of the first member of Focolare to be beatified

This book is sensible, judicious, well written, and filled with aptly chosen quotations, from Newman himself, and from friends and foes alike.

Newman's recent beatification has occasioned several appreciative essays in secular publications. But for Christians, Newman is something more, one of the finest religious minds of his century, whose work exerted a profound influence on the Second Vatican Council and thus on twenty-first-century Catholicism.

A short & unfinished history 

Stealing Fatima is memorably many things: a story of discovery and surprise, of friendship and love, of the intricate web that binds our personal and social lives with our lives of faith. 

The legacy of Avery Dulles

'The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from Burgundy'

Extending the argument against sex-selective abortion

In his new book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Fr. James Martin tries to introduce a new generation of spiritual seekers to the Jesuit tradition.

A pope who can and cannot change

A selection of articles from Commonweal on Benedict XVI.

A profile of the ethicist Gilbert Meilaender

No, this “Year of the Priest” has not been the best for priests or for any Catholics. Just when some of us thought we might be turning the corner, moving on, re-establishing some level of trust, it turns out the wounds are far deeper and much more widespread than we thought.

Stanley Hauerwas & the Christian Difference

The New York Times's worldview is secularist and secularizing, and as such it rivals the Catholic worldview. But what makes the Times unique is that it is not just the nation's self-appointed newspaper of record. It is, to paraphrase Chesterton, an institution with the soul of a church.

Why Is Rome Investigating U.S. Nuns?