Commentary
On ghosts – The Catholic Thing
Can the boundary between this life and the afterlife ever blur in ways the Church has not fully defined? Each year, All Souls’ Day and the Month of All Souls renew age-old questions about life, death, and the mystery that unites both. In popular…
What does Leo XIV’s education letter say?
In Disegnare nuove mappe di speranza, Pope Leo addresses Catholic education. It begins wth a preamble, which describes the world of education today. Leo says we are living in a time of “rapid changes and disorienting uncertainties.” Students are…
St. John Henry Newman against compromise
Jacob Phillips, First Things Thursday, October 30, 2025 Some look for uncompromising faith that offers a genuine alternative to contemporary society. Newman, by contrast, is often presented as the primary forerunner of the world-affirming and…
The Death of Halloween – The Catholic Thing
The night of drunken carousing that now passes for Halloween bears little resemblance to the festival of old. Like spiders slurping the innards of a beetle, disenchantment and commercialization have bled it of meaning. And yet the carapace…
How Doctors of the Church are chosen
Pope Leo will proclaim St. John Henry Newman a doctor of the church on November 1st. What criteria are used to make this decision? First of all, the word “doctor” in this sense does not refer to the person who treats your flu or to someone who…
Canterbury Fails – The Catholic Thing
When it was announced that the next archbishop of Canterbury would be a woman (Sarah Mullally) with progressive views on homosexuality and abortion, social media erupted with a combination of outrage, congratulations, derision, and triumph. A…
Will MAGA save France? (Monarchy And God Again)
Kristen Ziccarelli, European Conservative Tuesday, October 28, 2025 Modern France is at a precipice. Its Fifth Republic is now widely understood, even in the halls of power, to be on the verge of collapse, as President Macron was forced to…
Abp. Cordileone on why the Solemn Pontifical High Latin Mass is coming to San Francisco
Says Archbishop Cordileone: “It’s occurring because we have a parish here that’s hosting a Rosary congress. There’s a movement of people. And they wanted to bring it here to San Francisco, a Eucharistic Rosary congress. And one of our parishes…
Vatican II at 60 – The Catholic Thing
December 8, 2025, is quickly approaching, a date marking the sixtieth anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. “A budding teenager at the time, I paid scant attention to the event, not realizing that it would dominate most…
Two takes on Pope Leo
Father de Souza discusses two new books about the new pope. We already have an array of first-hundred-days analyses of Pope Leo XIV, as though the first American-born pope could be judged like an American president. Yet Robert Prevost of…