By signing one sentence asking for an exemption, the Little Sisters are not formally cooperating. They are materially cooperating only in a minor and remote sense.
Catholicism in Cuba is neither tragic nor dramatic, but endowed with sensuality and humor; it is also charged with an ironic distance and a healthy anticlericalism.
We never admitted that the lake was terrifying, that it was a dark, alluring, fearful hole in the world, more grim than serene. We never said the word “drown."
Pope Benedict XVI resigned over three years ago; Francis is undeniably the only pope.Yet in some ways the transition is ongoing and continues to affect the Church.
Pope Francis may have named Fr. Pizzaballa an archbishop and temporary seat-holder of a patriarchate precisely in order to succeed the ambitious Cardinal Scola.
Canada’s long-standing ban on physician-assisted death is over. Though Canada has a predilection for polite and civil exchange, was the debate heated enough?
Online media in the wake of tragedy could be doing something good. It may be a modern means of activating an ancient genre: a particular subset of human sorrow.
There won't be "reform of the reform" after all. Francis shakes up the Vatican's financial management, chooses new (lay, non-Italian) leadership at the press office.
Though the Philippines’ poor have contributed the least to the nation’s climate-related crises, it is they who have lost the most, and who stand to lose still more.
Church teaching about the use of force is paradoxical. “Just peace”—not just war—should be the distinguishing mark and calling of the global Catholic Church.
As the CDW sets up a new commission, is there hope for Vatican II Catholics that the pope will firmly resist any attempts to roll back the clock on those reforms?
Where is a compelling vision of human well-being? Missing is the sense that “we are all really responsible for all.” This feeds into the hands of people like Trump.
The tensions within Orthodoxy are partly theological. But there is also a more worldly clash of interests, including the rivalry between Constantinople and Moscow.
Despite allowing a study on the female deaconate, the pope seemed to rule out any new structure in the church that would concretely incorporate women’s voices.
Waiting while depressed is like being anywhere but the present, pulled toward the past and future by anxiety. Silent waiting tries to do something different.
Donald Trump says things to appeal to whatever crowd he's talking to, but casting doubt on Hillary Clinton’s faith before a group of evangelicals is a new low.
In the aftermath of events like Orlando, it seems as though the God of Jacob does not perceive, and it is no impiety to say so. But that is not the end of the story.
Poland's young extreme nationalists represent a revival for which being Catholic and Polish implies also being anti-European, anti-pluralist, and anti-liberal.
Religious liberty has a damaged “brand” these days, and Catholic institutions have played a role. The nation's largest church now needs to lower the temperature.
We need to name the anger of voters but in the restrained rhetoric of the common good. Would the cures offered by Trump and Sanders prove worse than the disease?
Criticism and applause for Francis's newly created process to try bishops accused of covering up sex abuse; Where have certain "bad" bishops from the U.S. ended up?
The American labor movement has been pushed back on nearly every front. Its revival is the key to reducing economic inequality and fostering shared prosperity.
In Robin Lane Fox's biography of St. Augustine, Augustine doesn’t convert to Christianity; he converts to whatever you get when you put aside worldly ambition.
Early stories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims; the politics of celibacy and marriage; reflections from Cardinal Kasper; afterlife and wealth in early Christianity.
Gregg looks at five of the two dozen stories with characters shared by the Jewish Bible, New Testament, and Qur’an, interpreting how they are told in each tradition.
As a student of Reinhold Niebuhr, President Obama has sought out occasions on which he could preach about the ironies and uncertainties of human action.
Instead of jettisoning the just-war tradition, it would be better for the church to be more willing to condemn wars when they fail to meet its rigorous demands.
In the 2016 campaign, there's a profound pessimism among conservative Christians that contrasts sharply with the movement’s hopeful spirit in its Reagan Era heyday.
"Deeply Christian, she has no desire to impose her religion on others, but only to work together to make her country better. Her open, humble practice stays with me"
Historian Frank Oakley rejects the idea that that Greece and Rome were secular. He insists that the “seedbed" for individual rights lies in the Latin Middle Ages.
Cardinals grapple with Francis's unclear "but-also" logic; Bishops hesitate to implement changes pope called for three years ago; What will happen to Vatican Radio?
