Columns
When the Pope Went to Westminster
Fifteen years ago this month, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to make a state visit to Britain. (John Paul II made a pastoral visit in 1982.) It was an historic event, both for the Catholic Church in the UK and for the United Kingdom.…
The Hunger Bunker: ‘Triumph of the Heart’
Poland has suffered much over the centuries, and the Poles have been made stronger for it, in the spirit of what Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But…
Dating Advice for Young Catholic Men
Imagine you are applying for a highly competitive job, and someone says, “I can tell you how to be more competitive than 98 percent of the other applicants.” Would you be interested? Let’s say he adds: “It’s not hard, but you may not like it.”…
Pope Leo and the Limits of Government
A few decades of teaching at the college level have demonstrated to me that students are increasingly unprepared to study political theory. This is neither an insult nor is it the students’ fault. In some ways, it is a reversion to the mean,…
The Smell of a Skunk and the Odor of Sanctity
I was speaking to one of my Capuchin confreres recently who had just returned from visiting his family. He remarked that there were a number of skunks around his sister’s home. These little creatures can be quite cute. Skunks are notorious,…
Newman and the Joy of the Dance
The big Newman moment of the summer was the declaration by Pope Leo XIV that St. John Henry would soon be declared a Doctor of the Church. I had another Newman moment a few weeks beforehand in a cinema watching, of all things, The Life of Chuck.…
Parallel Lives: With Faith and Without
Consider the parallel lives of John and Bill, who each have three children, reside in the suburbs, and commute to the city to work. John is agnostic and indifferent to things religious. Bill is a practicing Catholic; he attends Mass each Sunday…
How St. Augustine Converted to Christianity
St. Augustine’s conversion began, on his own telling, when, as a nineteen-year-old boy – roughly the age of a college sophomore today – he encountered a dialogue by Cicero called the Hortensius: Quite definitely it changed the direction of my…
Politics and the Birthday Party
July 2026 marks the 250th birthday of the United States. Alas, the celebration next year will come in the midst of yet another election cycle, and at a time of deep cultural divisions. We need a “common good” politics more than ever. But…
Back to Schooling – The Catholic Thing
In spite of all the fuss over “education” and the enormous amounts of money spent on it in America, as students are returning to school this week, how much real learning goes on these days? My parents had only public high-school diplomas, long…