One of Merton’s gifts as a writer was the ability to insinuate himself into the lives of those he'd never met and remain a personal presence decades after his death.
Francis took a stalled case, dispensed with the need for a second miracle, and made Serra the first Hispanic saint in the United States. That has some people angry.
When the priest said “The Mass is ended, alleluia,” she burst out laughing. As a guest at Mass, she sensed the beauty of Catholic worship, and also its strangeness.
Biographer Randy Boyagoda paints Richard John Neuhaus as an unusually ambitious and politically engaged priest as public intellectual—but is his narrative too tidy?
Traditionalists grumble Francis is stacking the Synod assembly with "lefties"; 2016 World Day of Peace theme is announced, along with a long list of global issues.
Secular law can help us grapple with questions about when wrongdoing begins, when it ends, and how people can put it behind them and move on with their lives.
No one in the congregation was paying much attention to what Father Pastor was saying about the deceased. They were focused on where he'd put his reading glasses.
Readers write in on how academic, humanistic, and prophetic cultures should be balanced, when kids should be confirmed, and why nothing's better than the Eucharist.
For supporters of same-sex marriage, Obergefell is definitely a victory. But the victory is not primarily one for the Supreme Court—or for Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Articulating a basis for the Court’s judgment that's preferable to the somewhat diffuse mix of rationales on which Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority relies.
'Laudato si’' develops a notion of solidarity within and between generations, not only with fellow human beings but with the whole earth and all its creatures.
Whether or not U.S. support for LGBT rights goes beyond the rhetorical, societies still viewing themselves as “under God” will bridle at this sudden turn about.
As Francis plans to overhaul the Holy See's media management, a bishop-psychotherapist is assigned to help remove "playboy priests" from an infamous Italian diocese.
The core liberal conviction about the Supreme Court still rings true: it is most constructive when power is used to vindicate the rights of beleaguered minorities.
For Francis, climate change is part of a larger ecological crisis—that itself is part of a larger ethical failure involving how we treat the poor and the unborn.
Anne Enright's new novel suggests something simple—family, for good or ill, keeps forming us even when we try to escape it—but her prose constantly surprises.
Amusing and engaging, Barney Frank's stories (from sixteen terms in Congress) tell what kinds of “inside politicking” informed the presidencies of LBJ through Obama.
Paul Moses's history of Irish-Italian relations in 19th century New York delves into the causes for "race war" between the immigrant groups and how they overcame it.
Can Cardinal Pell – or any Catholic – simply ignore the new encyclical or the parts they don’t like? Many have done so before, not least concerning Humanae Vitae.
A preview of upcoming papal visits at home, abroad and with Italian protestants. And the press turns Francis's list of "attacks on life" into an abortion debate.
Readers "angered at the tortured logic of the editors" respond to the removal of Bishop Finn, Francis's failures, the value of "big history," and how to know Jesus.
It is a mark of how much has changed so quickly that Ireland's vote for gay marriage was the expected outcome, even if the breadth of that outcome was breathtaking.
