Catholicism
A selection of recent articles on this topic
Peter Says No
Perhaps the greatest Anglican intellect of the late twentieth century, Henry Chadwick, described Blessed John Henry Cardinal…
A Papal Tutor of Heroic Virtue
On January 20, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to publish decrees acknowledging…
The Invention of Pigs
Come our one great bushfirepigs, sty-released, declined to quittheir pavements of gravel and shit.Other beasts ran headlong,…
A Response to Archbishop Victor Fernandez
Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernandez has taken liberties in his role as ghostwriter for Pope Francis. Michael Pakaluk,…
Praying for Christian Unity
Fifty-eight years ago this week, on January 25, 1959, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, less than three months into…
A Response to the Bishops of Malta
The Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano has published a document by the bishops of Malta to the priests of…
Fake History
Speaking of public policy debates, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that, while everyone had a right to…
Lessons from an Era of Confusion
In the introduction to Aggiornamento on the Hill of Janus: The American College in Rome, 1955-1979, Msgr.…
City of Conquest and Crossroads
Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the Worldby thomas f. maddenviking, 400 pages, $32.00 Thomas…
New Year’s Wishes for some Catholic Brethren
The year ahead promises to be a challenging year for the Catholic Church. Thus some new year’s…
Silence: Scorsese’s Spiritual Masterpiece
It has taken almost thirty years for Martin Scorsese to film Silence, Shūsaku Endō’s novel about Catholic…
A “Merciless Assault on Human Dignity”
The archbishop of Toronto is given to deprecating himself as “just a simple country cardinal.” In my…
The Troubling Legacy of Shūsaku Endō’s Silence
Shūsaku Endō’s Silence is now widely regarded as a modern classic. The initial reaction of Japanese Catholics,…
Shūsaku Endō’s Swamp
Silence, the haunting 1966 Shūsaku Endō novel of faith, apostasy, and martyrdom in seventeenth-century Japan, tells the…
Christmas and the Divine Proximity
In October 2001 I had a long conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. It was but weeks after…
