Pope Leo XIV’s choice of papal name is profoundly significant. What might the new pontiff have to say about the social and technological challenges facing us in the 2020s?
Paula Fredriksen’s 'Ancient Christianities' looks to explore the tangled root system underlying Christianity—not a story of a series of individual men, but of broad social movements.
"From where I was standing, the pope was a tiny white speck. That was okay. Having been granted eyes that could really see, I was finally using them in Rome."
"Ceasing to attend to the inner theater and looking instead at the Christian story of death would place Christians where they belong: in the open before their God."
The risk of nuclear war is higher now than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Catholic principles of just peace can move us back from the brink.
Lent is a season of reflection—but also a season to prepare for the work ahead, to sweep aside everything that has not worked and find new ways through the desert.
The final twist in 'Conclave' is hardly sensationalistic: it raises real questions about how the Church accommodates people outside binaries of sex and gender.
“As Francis has magnificently shown us, a pope serves the People of God with a total self-giving, ad vitam: in sickness or in health, strong or frail, able-bodied or wheelchair-bound, clear in voice or raspy and breathless.”
Like all human institutions, the Church has often failed. But it is more than its failures—and much more than the endless quarrels over Vatican II or sexual morality.