One of the minor characters in Evelyn Waugh’s World War II trilogy, Sword of Honor , is the commander of a super-secret military...

Assumption of the Virgin, Corregio, ca. 1526-1530. Well, I was typing on my phone during Mass again last Sunday. My fellow parishioners...

In the early 1990s, I met Kirill, now Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, when the man christened Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev was chief...

Several years ago, I was making a 30-day Ignatian silent retreat when a few days into the retreat I got a hankering for ice cream. As I...

If you’ve not been in the Vatican basilica on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, by all means put that on your bucket...

Jesus regularly challenged his followers, inviting them to put the kingdom first by denying themselves and taking up their cross. Jesus...

For months now, the world press has described Russian troop deployments along Ukraine’s borders as spearheads of a possible invasion. The...

Twenty years ago, during the Long Lent of 2002, I began using the term “Catholic Lite” to describe a project that detached the Church...

What gave the early Christians the desire to leave behind their professions, travel to foreign lands and, in most cases, give their...

Archbishop Arthur Roche, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, recently sent the world’s bishops instructions...

Every time in history has its trials, but the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is one that stands apart because its impact has been so...

Despite being immersed for over 30 years in the study of modern Polish history, I must confess that I’d never heard of the heroic Ulma...

There have been vast improvements in the techniques and technology of filmmaking since 1961, when Stanley Kramer made Judgment at...

Along with many other cultural commentators, I have been tracing for the past many years the phenomenon of religious disaffiliation, the...

The annual March for Life in Washington began in 1974 — and it’s hard to think of a more admirable or consistent public witness to the...

Paradiso, Gustave Dore, 1868. As I write this, we are on the eve of the first anniversary of my mother’s death. The last in a year of...

How is wine related to charity? Although we may think of consuming wine as something simply pleasant and enjoyable, Jesus used it as an...

A common misconception holds that early “modernity” invented the “individual”: the idea that everyone is a someone with a unique identity...

While history is always full of surprises, including happy ones, I must confess that I’m not full of Pentecostal joy as I consider the...

(Photo: Adobe Stock) Have you ever googled “percentage of people who dread the holidays”? It’s kind of fascinating. The numbers range,...