Twice this spring—within the space of barely over a month—Pope Benedict XVI took the highly unusual step of removing a bishop from his office. Early in April he ousted Bishop Jean-Claude Makaya Loemba from leadership […]
On May 13, 2011, the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (PCED) published an instruction on the application of the 2007 motu proprio designed to facilitate the celebration of the Latin Mass according to the 1962 Missal. […]
Emancipation from religious authority produced in its wake a litter of thumb-sucking books ostensibly designed to help children deal with the consequences of their parents’ brave quest for self-fulfillment, most notably the anguish of divorce. […]
The decision by the European Court of Human Rights—on appeal—that Italy’s schools may lawfully display the crucifix in classrooms was a rare piece of good news for religious believers in a Europe increasingly marked by […]
Two important documents on the sex-abuse crisis emerged in May. Unfortunately both were seriously flawed, because they paid little or no attention to a key issue—no, the key issue—in the scandal that has plagued the […]
A final report on the sex-abuse scandal prepared for the US bishops has found no single factor responsible for clerical abuse. The rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social […]
One of Pope Benedict XVI’s distinctive contributions to what successive popes have called the New Evangelization is to treat once-Christian countries as mission territory. To that end, he has instituted the Pontifical Council for Promoting […]
“Have you met any of these young retro-Catholics?” This question was directed to my table by a priest in his early 60s at the closing banquet for the American Catholic Historical Association several years ago. The priest […]
With the caveat that the human future is very hard to predict, much harder than, for example, the weather, I wish to make the following prediction—that the future of the national Democratic Party will be […]
In February, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, confirmed that the Vatican had declined to approve a second term for Lesley-Anne Knight, the secretary-general of Caritas International. That announcement triggered several weeks of […]
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