The Dispatch
Semiquincentennial prep with HBO
Having recently lamented in this space that book reading is on life support in these United States, I find myself in the awkward position of [...]
Addressing the cold lie about the “warmth of collectivism”
Essay
Bishop Robert Barron tweeted in response to Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural address last week, accomplishing something increasingly rare in public discourse, since he cut through rhetorical fog and exposed a philosophical fault line that modern politics [...]
Bigger on the inside than the outside
Books
Christmas is the season of pondering the paradox of the Incarnation itself. What was found in the stable at Bethlehem was far greater than everything outside. This is no mere poetic exaggeration. The infinite God [...]
Essay
My Christmas-tide Adventure with Mother Wilhelmina
I was quiet as my book club discussed a book of Christmas stories. As I listened, my mind roved over the busy year reaching its close. Then I remembered last December and knew I had [...]
Essay
A Cathedral Fit for Three Kings
In all my travels, I have beheld few if any more impressive sights than the breathtaking Gothic behemoth of Kölner Dom, “Cologne Cathedral,” illumined at night, bathed in golden-white light, with its twin towers rising above [...]
Features
Civil society in the U.S. is a dead man walking
At the beginning of episode seven of the second season of the TV series “Breaking Bad,” a mariachi band sings a Mexican corrido, or narrative ballad, about the show’s antihero protagonist Walter White. In the song, [...]
Essay
Chesterton, Retirement, and Abnegation
I do not intend in these remarks to look at Chesterton in his retirement, for the simple fact that he never seems to have retired. He finished writing his autobiography a few weeks before his [...]
Features
The New Saints and Blesseds of 2025
A 2005 curial document notes that “canonization is the supreme glorification by the Church of a Servant of God raised to the honors of the altar with a decree declared definitive and preceptive for the whole Church, [...]
Books
What It Means To Be Protestant is mostly about not being Catholic
What is Protestantism? It seems a straightforward thing to answer. Protestantism is the affirmation of Scripture as the ultimate, unparalleled authority of Christian faith and practice. Protestantism is the “five solae” of the sixteenth-century Reformation: Sola Scriptura, Solus [...]
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I. Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Vatican II, states that the Mohammedans “profess their faith as the faith of Abraham, and with us they worship the one, merciful God who will [...] -
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The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released today a “Doctrinal Note on Some Marian Titles regarding Mary’s Cooperation in the Work of Salvation” (Mater Populi Fidelis), and it has raised a few eyebrows along with [...] -
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J Mcallion:
Welcome to the disaster of Islamic communism!
Tom in Florida:
I agree. Many thanks to Bishop Barron for his timely and superbly appropriate public comments and to Dr. Peter for…
Edward J Baker:
Sins of pride will never be acknowledged nor abandoned by those who identify themselves as compassionate merely for demanding policies…
