Commentary
Elon Musk’s favorite book is a Catholic classic
The 17th-century Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, a collection of 300 maxims, distills the art of living wisely in a world governed by vanity, illusion, and self-interest. Far from being a call to retreat, it offers a…
A rare victory for fraternal correction
Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture Thursday, August 21, 2025 More than a month ago, Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse made the appalling decision to appoint a convicted rapist as chancellor of his archdiocese. He explained that he had “taken the…
The Age of Martyrdom – The Catholic Thing
Robert Royal is a witness to the witnesses with his new book, The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century. As he did in an earlier book about 20th-century martyrs, Royal spans the globe,…
Can transsexuals be baptized? – The Catholic Thing
Anthony R. Lusvardi, S.J., First Things Wednesday, August 20, 2025 As the LGBTQ ideology comes increasingly to resemble a rival religious movement, we should recognize that it poses similar obstacles to discipleship. The movement possesses its…
The invisible vocations crisis – The Catholic Thing
Stephen P. White, The Pillar Wednesday, August 20, 2025 The vocation crisis is not merely a crisis of priestly and religious vocations—though that problem is real and remains acute in many parts of the American Church. Whole generations of…
Is D.C.’s homeless cleanup un-Christian?
Catholic social teaching insists on the dignity of every human person and the primacy of the common good. This includes solidarity with those suffering. Yet solidarity does not mean tolerating social disorder or abandoning public…
On monasteries and birth rates
Social conservatives have long recognized the civilizational value of the quotidian work of parenthood. Analogously, we ought to recognize that it is in the small acts of local participation that societies thrive or languish. Even seemingly…
The dissident Beijing can’t break
Closing arguments start Thursday in the trial that could jail Jimmy Lai, a devout Catholic and Hong Kong’s most famous pro-democracy activist, for life. Lai is a self-made billionaire. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over Hong Kong…
Is a Christian king prepared to rule post-Christian Britain?
King Charles III, of course, is trapped within the contradiction of being the head of a Christian institution in a post-Christian country, roiled for the past half-century by the twin scourges of the sexual revolution and mass migration. The…
Priests are men, not machines, and need our help
Declining numbers of experienced priests, a shortage of new vocations to replace them as they retire, the forced consolidation of parishes in many dioceses due to diminished church attendance, heavy administrative responsibilities, and isolating…