Forty years ago the regime of Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Paul VI, began to reveal itself. Mythology had it that he was a good man who lost control, and that the disaster was caused by everything except his mistakes and pusillanimity. Msgr. F. D. Cohalan, a noted New York churchman and historian, contended there was…
Editor’s note: we originally published this piece on Nov 5, 2014. We are re-printing today because it is as relevant, if not moreso, than it was a year ago. In an interview with the Polish magazine Polonia Christiana, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, offers strong criticism of the proceedings of…
Hilary White —artist, journalist, and keeper of the weblog, Orwell’s Picnic emailed from Norcia to ask if I would contribute thoughts on the Synod to her new project on that topic. I really was not sure I had any thoughts. But her request left me wondering if perhaps I should. Truth to tell, I have not been…
At St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. Pope Francis addressed the victims of clerical sex abuse in no uncertain terms: I carry in my heart the stories, the suffering and the pain of the minors who were sexually abused by priests. I’m overwhelmed by the shame that people who were in charge of caring for…
We enter the church just moments before things begin, the altar boys and thurifer standing in anticipation in the small narthex, a faint wisp of incense rising through cross-shaped slits in burnished bronze. In hushed voices, we urge our small children forward, directing them to a pew near the back, in order to be able…
The Rosary is arguably the most recognizable Catholic devotion. Sadly, it is a devotion that has fallen out of fashion for many Catholics. This is deeply unfortunate, as the Rosary is one of the most powerful weapons in our arsenal for spiritual warfare and one of the greatest aids in the pursuit of a fruitful spiritual…
When I decided to publish Maureen Mullarkey’s essay, Notes on a Road Show, I had no idea that First Things editor R.R. Reno would make the decision to kill off Maureen’s entire blog. The piece first appeared there, but was soon thereafter taken down on Reno’s orders. Over the past year, Maureen and I have struck up a friendly correspondence based in…
The road show is over. The spectacle flamed up and subsided, a Roman candle of demonic sanctimony. Think of it as pre-game warm-up for the main event: the global climate summit in Paris, November 30 to December 11. The Vatican is partnering with the Obama administration, at the U.N. and later in Paris, in magnifying…
“He hath made every thing beautiful in His time: also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” –Ecclesiastes 3:11 In the hyper-connected age of social media, many have taken to using the Internet as a pseudo-confessional booth,…
In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face…
My Dear Wormwood, I’ve been meaning to write to you for some time about the dangers and opportunities presented to us by the Internet. The recent events at the Synod have given me a marvellous and delightful chance to talk about the opportunities. The dangers I will discuss another time. You will see how much…
