I read with interest the article by Joshua Katz in the January 2023 edition titled “Grace and Serendipity.” In response I offer the following: I had just been named pastor of a parish (Diocese of Oakland, California) and was assigned a mentor, one of the senior priests. In our first meeting, I . . . . Continue Reading »
We live in a divided age. My country of Britain increasingly exhibits the same sort of partisanship that wracks America. It can be hard to witness the bitter divisions of the culture war, and the terrible arguments setting friends and family at odds, and not conclude that we are living in that age . . . . Continue Reading »
Benedict XVI believed that his work was done. Three days after announcing his resignation, he gave a speech on the struggle that had defined his pontificate. It concerned the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, in which he had taken an important part. On one side stood the “true . . . . Continue Reading »
A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with some friends in Texas. The group, to use an oft-abused term correctly, was diverse—Jews and Catholics and evangelicals, young and old, university professors and professional musicians, with little in common save for our shared belief that . . . . Continue Reading »
No doctrine was more fundamental to the Bolsheviks than atheism. They professed absolute certainty that nothing exists beyond the chain of cause and effect described by the sciences. From day one they gleefully arrested priests, defaced icons, and subjected believers to mockery or worse. . . . . Continue Reading »
Anti-Semitism, it has often been observed, is remarkably adaptable. Across countless centuries, anti-Semites have targeted Jews because of their wealth and their poverty, their power and their frailty, their piety and their godlessness, their tribalistic chauvinism and their rootless . . . . Continue Reading »
The young are eschewing marriage. Birth rates are collapsing. Abortion and even post-natal infanticide are commonplace. Yawning inequalities divide the haves from the have-nots, spreading decadence among the former while immiserating the latter. Society is losing the thread of its noblest . . . . Continue Reading »
A secret government institution will always occupy an uncomfortable and uncertain place within an open society. In the United States, this tension has led to the creation of a parallel world in which secrecy is the norm and importance is measured by level of classification. This world both . . . . Continue Reading »
Not long ago, while in London, I passed by two street singers. A young man and woman, red-faced and with a smiling seriousness, were performing a version of the sixteenth-century song, “John, Come Kiss Me Now.” The small spectacle was wonderful: gentle, lilting, innocent, and mischievous all . . . . Continue Reading »
The legacy of Joseph Ratzinger does not rest on the institution of “pope emeritus,” which he pioneered. The great legacy of the theology professor, the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Pope Benedict XVI is instead his theological work, which . . . . Continue Reading »
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