On January 4, 2013, a month before Pope Benedict resigned, the Italian Central Bank turned the lights off on the entire Vatican. The Vatican no longer had the ability to make any electronic financial transactions. Italian authorities asserted that the Vatican was not in compliance with international money-laundering rules. This was a clear message that…
Asked by a journalist during the in-flight press conference home from Morocco about the potential consequences of his visit “for the future, for world peace, for coexistence in the dialogue between cultures,” Pope Francis responded: I will say that now there are flowers, the fruits will come later, but the flowers are promising. I am…
We’ve all heard the Dostoevsky quote: “Beauty will save the world.” Many of us have seen the Roger Scruton documentary Why Beauty Matters. We may even know intellectually that modern art — be it visual art, architecture, or music — is not only ugly, but dangerous to our souls and destructive in the social order.…
Cardinal Cláudio Hummes feels he is close to completing a project conceived of many years ago and tenaciously carried forward: the project of obtaining permission from the Vatican to ordain ad experimentum married men of a certain age (one hypothesis is over 50 years old) to account for the lack of priests in the center…
Until just a few weeks ago, I knew precious little about my mother’s side of the family. She passed away young, when she was 39 and I was 10; that was in the late 1970s. Other than her sister, who moved out to California not long after my mother’s death, I don’t remember ever meeting…
The following letter and my reply are a real exchange. The priest kindly permitted the publication of a version in which identifying personal details have been removed. We believe that there are now many priests in a situation of conscience similar or even identical to what is described here, and that reading this may help…
Suppose a man was presented the opportunity to live a double life filled with both esteem and vice, dignity and debauchery. Would the man jump at the chance? Glaucon, in Plato’s Book II of the Republic, argues that if a just man held possession of an invisible ring, he would undoubtedly live only for self-seeking pleasure and power. On…
When I was about 16 years old, I remember lying in my bed and hearing the muffled conversation of my parents in the next room. All of my five younger siblings were asleep, and whatever it was that my parents were talking about, whatever stresses were upon them in that moment, I felt this overwhelming…
An interesting thing has been happening in the world of online Catholic commentary over the past year. Where we once stood among only a scant few outlets crying out about the corruption at the highest levels of the Church, we are quickly seeing a rising chorus of voices following our lead. Everywhere you look, Catholics…
On the great Solemnity of the Annunciation of Our Lord, we celebrate not only the conception of the Second Person of the Trinity, but also Mary’s Fiat — her “yes” to the will of God in her life. In addition, Mary’s Fiat also delivered a definitive and fatal blow to the devil, often depicted in…
At Christmas in 2013, I traveled from my home in Sydney, Australia to visit my mother in Britain. One morning, I was up early and decided to sort through a tea chest containing my belongings in the cellar below the kitchen. I left the warmth of the kitchen and descended the worn stone steps to…
