Now featured on the homepage, Robert Mickens’s Letter from Rome, in which he writes on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Francis’s ecumenical efforts, and whether Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila might be the successor to the current pontiff. Read it all here.

Also, the editors on what to make of Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of the Paris attacks:

[N]ot all victims of terrorism are heroes, and there’s nothing especially heroic in giving offense just for the fun of it, even if, like Charlie Hebdo, one does so indiscriminately. But whether one finds the publication’s special brand of lewd iconoclasm funny or blasphemous or both—à chacun son gout—one can admire its staff for their willingness to go on doing what they knew might get them killed, for refusing to let zealots armed with Kalashnikovs determine the boundaries of permissible discourse. Ross Douthat of the New York Times put it well when, after conceding that “a society’s liberty is not proportional to the quantity of blasphemy it produces,” he went on, “If publishing something might get you slaughtered and you publish it anyway, by definition you are striking a blow for freedom, and that’s precisely the context when you need your fellow citizens to set aside their squeamishness and rise to your defense.”

Read all of “Call It Courage” here.

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