A city is noisy, dirty, sometimes cruel, sometimes surprisingly kind, always restless, constantly building over its own past. Like all things, it needs prayer.
The thread running Michael Brendan Dougherty’s book is the author’s spiritual development, which culminates in the discovery of his own vocation as a father.
In the debates about democratic socialism, we need a new idea of utopia. The life and work of nineteenth-century socialist William Morris is a good place to start.
It can be appealing to think of the Bible as a stable, fixed text. But paleography is not an exact science, even in the hands of the best practitioners.
Abel Ferrara’s new biopic about Pier Paolo Pasolini evinces a highly personal, anti-institutional strain of Catholicism—where grace abounds in squalor and scandal.
I agree with the values of sacrifice and care, and I often find Briallen Hopper’s writing tenacious and lovely. So why did her book leave me not quite satisfied?
In the second season of ‘Fleabag,’ the titular character begins a sexual relationship with a priest. What follows is a heady tale of guilt, loneliness, and pain.
The Catholic Church now has a stronger theology of women deacons than it did during the fraught time of Paul VI. But now political conditions are less auspicious.
Drawing on the mystery of Christ in the liturgy to nourish one’s own life of faith is not always a self-evident or easy thing to do. We need to become mystagogues.
Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo has released excerpts from letters with Theodore McCarrick, revealing more details about informal sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI.
The church is a liminal space I’m lingering in: a space of transition, of walking along boundaries, of being neither in nor out, of neither staying nor leaving.
Maybe Pell’s time is prison has not been a martyrdom, or even a monstrous injustice, but an expiation that is helping to bring about an overdue pastoral conversion.
A video made by the Archdiocese of Bucharest in anticipation of Pope Francis’s visit to Romania kindles a spirit too often lacking in the American church: joy.
The recent UN report on the rapid loss of biodiversity failed to arouse our concern. But endangered ecosystems reflect our gravely sinful habits of consumption.
Pro-life and pro-choice activists have seized on Alabama’s new abortion law to energize their supporters. But abortion demands more than performative politics.
The medieval Franciscan philosopher and theologian Duns Scotus is barely studied today. But the church would be enriched by a renewed engagement with his works.
By the time I arrived at Harvard, the school was secular, yet haunted by faith. I’d been a practicing Christian for years, but had never been baptized.
Jacopo Tintoretto has been considered by many, including John Ruskin and Henry James, to be the greatest artist of the Italian Renaissance. His work astounds.
Is all flesh really beloved by God? Or is Christianity just another sect, with a new elite kind of flesh that belongs, unambiguously, to no one except its members?
The late Fr. Ted Hesburgh transformed the University of Notre Dame into a leading institution. A new book tendentiously ignores key aspects of his life and work.
By framing clerical abuse as a matter of sacrilege, Benedict reinforces the disastrous playbook that has guided the church’s response to the crisis for decades.
Prolifers are supposed to believe that the right choice is not always the apparently expedient one. Their capitulation to Donald Trump damages their credibility.
In our divided era, aggressive secularism and Catholic neo-integralism are not the only two options available. A new Vatican document revisits religious freedom.
Despite his full, long life, the death of Jean Vanier is still sad. And as Christians, we must not skip grief nor automatically reach for a happy narrative.
French thinker Étienne Balibar argues that the modern nation-state has become a religion that is now collapsing under the weight of its contradictions.
Like most human institutions, the church has long avoided telling the truth about much of its past. But that doesn’t mean its understanding of human life is false.
A new book describes everything one could wish to know about Hell: fire, brimstone, and boiling oil, but also the history of the idea across religions.
It will take time and care, but I know Notre-Dame will have its Alleluia moment. I pray there will also be one for the church that inspired its creation.
