The perils of “preferred peers”
On Catholic campuses that aspire to Top Ten or Top Twenty status in publicity sweepstakes like the U.S. News and World Report college...
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Taking the “long view” on Russia
Queried about the Holy See’s less-than-vigorous response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, senior Vatican officials are given to saying...
The amazing, and now Venerable, Father Al
At an inch or so over five feet and weighing, I would guess, something on the underside of 100 pounds, Sister Winnie, a soft spoken...
Flannery O’Connor and Catholic realism
From this vale of tears, one can never be sure about the boundaries of acceptable behavior at the Throne of Grace. Is laughter at earthly...
Explosive business in North Dakota
The “Official Portal for the North Dakota State Government” lists that commonwealth’s nicknames as the Peace Garden State, the...
Regensburg vindicated
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2006, my wife and I were dining in Cracow with Polish friends when an agitated Italian Vaticanista (pardon...
Remembering the great Fouad Ajami
In a year replete with devastating news, the June 22 death of Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami hit especially hard. For decades, Fouad, a...
The covenant of marriage
My son Stephen and I spent an unusual, albeit unusually moving, Independence Day: we attended the golden wedding anniversary celebration...
Recognizing American saints
Most attention-paying U.S. Catholics are aware of the beatification causes for Archbishop Fulton Sheen and Catholic Worker co-foundress...
Is history really over?
In 1989, as the Cold War entered the bottom of the ninth inning, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a memorable essay entitled...
A millennial column (so to speak)
I’ve been writing op-ed columns for the Catholic press since 1979. In its present form, “The Catholic Difference,” I began this column in...
Ronald Reagan: cold warrior and nuclear abolitionist
In recent years, as scholars have explored Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy with greater access to primary-source documents, something...
Shipwreck and mission
The post-Vatican II Lectionary for Mass has many fine features, one of which is the continuous reading of the Acts of the Apostles during...
An eminent distortion of history
As the world marked the silver anniversary of the Polish elections of June 1989, which eventually brought to power the first...
An eminent distortion of history
As the world marked the silver anniversary of the Polish elections of June 1989, which eventually brought to power the first...
The uses of monarchy
Hereditary monarchy is not exactly a growth industry in the 21st century. But those who imagine monarchy to be useless in a democratic...
Books for summer reading
Real readers read books all year round. But the convention of the “summer reading list” has become so thoroughly engrained in our culture...
Mission time
The Office of Readings for the solemnity of the Ascension offers a lovely excerpt from one of St. Augustine’s sermons “de Ascensione...
An Open Letter to the Patriarch of Moscow
His Holiness, Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Danilov Monastery 115191 Moscow RUSSIA Your Holiness: Grace and peace in our...
John Paul and Francis at Yad Vashem
As that familiar parody of bad fiction has it, “it was a dark and stormy night” – March 21, 2000, to be precise – when I made my way from...
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