Demographic shifts, a shrinking priesthood, and the financial pressures facing the church all tell a complex story about the future of Catholic parishes.
Preachers should emulate teachers at mass, striving to be adaptable, humble, loving, and willing to learn by inviting participation from the congregation.
A new social document from the Orthodox Church brings the political responsibilities of the church to the fore, tackling inequality, refugees, and many other topics.
The coronavirus crisis will likely demand the kind of collective sacrifice not seen since World War II. It will also challenge how we live together in society.
David Bentley Hart’s book makes the case for universal salvation, arguing that a belief in eternal damnation is morally repugnant and theologically insupportable.
Problems have solutions, while mysteries like suffering, love, and death do not. They must be instead lived out with attention to human richness and interconnection.
Lies and deception have compromised the integrity of the mission of L’Arche. But it has also responded with humility and integrity, and begun the work of healing.
Giving medical professionals some agency in end-of-life decisions can be consistent with church teaching. We just need to integrate the concept of futility.
Francis’s post-synodal exhortation ‘Querida Amazonia’ is unique in more ways than one. It throws his one major structural reform into considerable turmoil.
“We might then think of our redeemed bodies almost like diamonds, simultaneously refracting different times of our lives as we turn in the light of God’s love.”
The Catholic Church in Canada has not escaped the abuse crisis. But Canadian activists and church leaders are moving toward transparency and increased awareness.
Ryan was a bit of a skeptic in his way, rejecting, or at least being indifferent to, church teachings that didn’t arise from identification with the poor.
A new book on Francis by noted papal biographer Austen Ivereigh promised to be more critical. And yet in important ways, it again lets Francis off the hook.
The short poems of Samuel Menashe are unique: self-contained epigrams, charms, wishes, prayers, descriptive one-shots, shapely units of quotable wisdom.
If the hierarchy wants to reclaim some moral authority, shaping a better Catholic narrative in public life is necessary. Pace Charles Chaput, it must be inclusive.
The debate is not whether modern paganism is real, but where it lives, how it appears, and what it does. In contemporary politics, it's cruelty and violence.
Despite the pivotal role he played in Vatican II, Benedict XVI has spent the rest of his career, particularly his emeritus papacy, distancing himself from it.
By dragging Benedict into schemes like Cardinal Sarah’s book about celibacy, the anti-Francis faction reveals deep flaws in the current emeritus papacy.
Interreligious-dialogue initiatives like KAICIID should be welcome in Europe. Austria should find a better way to protest Saudi Arabia’s human-rights policies.
In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent an envoy to persuade George W. Bush not to invade Iraq. As tensions with Iran continue to mount, it’s a story worth revisiting.
With the release of Terrence Malick’s Jägerstätter biopic, the martyr’s biography has finally come into broader public view. But his sacramental devotions haven’t.
