On this the last day of the calendar year, I cannot help wondering what mattered in my life during the past year. Not what mattered to me, ...

The story behind today's feast is well-known: see Matthew 2: 13-18. The feast itself is becoming well-known as the Pro-Life Feast, secon...

Several years ago, then-Cardinal Ratzinger gave the third of his extended interviews to his compatriot, journalist Peter Seewald: God and t...

As per my theme of yesterday, I want to focus on something the Pope said during his Midnight Mass homily . Like all great and abiding truths...

By way of indirect response to being greeted by some (presumably nominal) Catholics with "Happy Holidays," I have taken to emulati...

Since the book this post is about has been in print for three years and in my "been there, read that" pile for two, I've been...

I should have done this on December 6, the feast of the real St. Nicholas , a fourth-century bishop in what is now Turkey. But I was too tir...

Fortunately, I am spared the temptation to sensationalize by depicting what I shall write about because, as a matter of principle, I do not ...

See my post at Pontifications . I welcome comments either there or here.

In my previous life as an academic, I was given to lamenting pendulum swings in scholarship as well as politics. A mythic narrative or theor...

Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to the peasant (officially "Saint" since 2002) Juan Diego in 1531, was given the above title b...

The second reading for Mass today (click on the box in the sidebar) contains the following exhortation from St. Paul: Brothers and sisters:...

A great lacuna in pastoral care is that of the mentally ill. There's long been a well-developed system of care for the physically ill; m...

I've had difficulty not writing but posting this week. Something to do with Blogger's image display. So I'm posting today both w...

The contrarian in me loves writing about this topic. Defined as dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception w...

On Monday, December 5, Air Force One landed at the airport where I work part-time, whereupon President Bush was taken down the route I trave...

Yep, it's started. It is becoming abundantly clear that the US bishops will each interpret the new Vatican instruction on the admission ...

Over the last several years, it has seemed to me that the Left, ecclesial as well as political, is getting dottier. And I don't think it...

In addition to limbo, which will get nearly all the media attention, the current meeting of the International Theological Commission is disc...

As announced over a year ago , the Vatican's International Theological Commission has been discussing the hoary topic of limbo this week...