In March 2022, the Nordic Bishops’ Conference sent an open letter to the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg. The Nordic bishops began by mentioning their historic debt of gratitude to the German Church: In Norway, for instance, the nineteenth-century . . . . Continue Reading »
In a glass case at Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg is a small wax doll. Its eyes look demurely downward, it wears a crown several times the size of its head, and it is clad in a richly embroidered garment that looks like nothing so much as a sumptuous eighteenth-century ball gown. This is . . . . Continue Reading »
Thank you for printing my friend Fr. Blake Johnson’s excellent piece on women’s ordination (“Mere Priestesses,” May 2024). Although some have misread C. S. Lewis and likely will misread Fr. Johnson as accusing women priests of being sexual deviants, the problem has nothing to do with the act . . . . Continue Reading »
To whom does a language belong? One might think it the possession of all who speak it. But as anyone who has learned a foreign language can attest, one receives such a language as an ill-fitting garment, awkward until broken in through sustained and strenuous effort. Or perhaps a language is the . . . . Continue Reading »
Is the Second Vatican Council receding in the church’s rearview mirror? Has the Francis pontificate raised new and difficult questions about the exercise of papal authority? Is the Roman Church poised to become non-Western? Can popes and bishops teach effectively in a time of rampant individualism . . . . Continue Reading »
Shepherds must teach their sheep to understand what the Bible teaches about sexuality, or they leave them to the wolves. Continue Reading »
Imagine the shell you findon the beach, a large conch,half-buried, glistening inmorning light, waiting to belifted, rinsed, held cupped to your ear: This is your body,listen and hear; blood flows,pulse ticks, the ocean hums,waves curl, crest, hushed, foamlicks wet sand, thoughts rise, dissolve, wind . . . . Continue Reading »
If you’re interested in either the thought of St. John Paul II or masculinity in general, this is the book for you. In the first two parts, Delaney brilliantly summarizes and explains John Paul’s philosophy of the human person and his theology of the body. In the latter half of the book, Delaney . . . . Continue Reading »
The recovery of good driving manners is essential to the renewal of our deteriorating culture. Continue Reading »
Mid-century Ireland was so much more than the poor, priest-ridden, censorship-stifled, philistinic wasteland that Neil Jordan describes. Continue Reading »
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