This COVID-19 crisis is the kind of emergency that in the last two centuries has amplified the advantage the institutional papacy has over local churches.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI didn’t turn his back on Vatican II: he endorsed its core ideas, emphasizing the person of Christ and our role as Christ’s body.
Francis’s post-synodal exhortation ‘Querida Amazonia’ is unique in more ways than one. It throws his one major structural reform into considerable turmoil.
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.
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 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.
Set in a miserable dystopia, Houellebecq’s latest novel is both thought-provoking and wearying, fronted by a hypercynical yet dangerously nostalgic narrator.
