Paul Baumann

Matthew Walther’s idealization of a faultless Catholic past and a less-democratic future rings hollow.

“When I graded the first set of tests for the ethics classes, I discovered that more than half of the students had cheated.”

Focusing exclusively on the Church’s putative usefulness in the here and now often causes us to lose sight of other realities.

The Tridentine rite won’t bring back a golden age in the Church. But defenders of liturgical reform shouldn’t be complacent about their own problems.

The Church needs to give women decision-making authority, but ordination may not be the only—or indeed the most successful—path to achieve that end.

Progressive and conservative Catholics should both seek to avoid deepening fractures in the Church.