Commentary
Goodbye, childless elites – The Catholic Thing
The U.S. birthrate has declined to record lows in recent years, well below population replacement rates. So the news that the vice president and second lady are having a fourth child is welcome (and significant) news indeed, for several reasons.…
How a Catholic priest brought skiing to Central Europe
An Italian priest from the 1600s is credited with bringing skiing from remote Scandinavia to other parts of Europe. Father Francesco Negri was a natural history and geography buff, and he had many helpful hints for successful skiing, including…
Making sense of Donald Trump
We live in unusual times, and Donald Trump is, to put it mildly, an unusual politician. His goals seem quite simple, and—once again—uniform. In private life, he believes in making a splash and winning in competitive pursuits, and as president,…
Nuns don’t want to be priests
Sixty-four percent of American Catholics say the Church should allow women to be ordained as priests, according to Pew Research. In several Latin American countries, women’s ordination is even more popular (in Brazil, a staggering 83 percent of…
What does Christianity have to say about the Olympics?
In fact, the relationship between the Olympics and religion is rather complex. History.com tells us that “the Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the…
Cardinal Müller on ultramontanism – The Catholic Thing
“The Pope is not a Führer,” Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller said in a recent interview. The prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith described the veneration of the private and political opinions of Pope Francis as…
Christ offers more than John Lennon could ever ‘Imagine’
I was reminded of John Lennon’s song Imagine – so popular, apparently, with people of a secular nature. It is, in my view, one of the worst songs ever written in terms of its message. The song’s lyrics call for us to imagine a world in which…
German bishops and the specter of schism – this week?
Gaetano Masciullo, European Conservative Thursday, January 29, 2026 On January 17, Pope Leo XIV received in audience the Apostolic Nuncio to the Federal Republic of Germany, Msgr. Nikola Eterović. The meeting is presumed to have revolved around…
Venezuelan exile: Tyranny follows post-Christian culture
Solène Tadié, National Catholic Register Thursday, January 29, 2026 Alejandro Peña Esclusa, a former Venezuelan presidential candidate and Catholic intellectual, who spent a year imprisoned without trial under Hugo Chávez in 2010 before being…
A ‘seamless garment’ for the Right?
In 1983, Cardinal Joseph Bernadin proposed the image of a seamless garment for a Catholic approach to what has been termed “the life issues.” In a widely quoted sentence, Bernadin argued that “the spectrum of life cuts across the issues of…