Stephen Bullivant is Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St. Mary’s University in London, where is also Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society. He studied theology and philosophy […]
Last fall I cheered the impending news of John Henry Newman’s canonization, for which we now have a date: October 13 of this year. October happens to be the month in which, after many years […]
The Church is paralyzed today. Last November’s meeting of the USCCB, the recent papal motu proprio (which I discussed here), and now this month’s USCCB meeting have all demonstrated an exhaustion of episcopal imagination, which […]
I was on sabbatical last year, and as I finished three books, several international lectures, and a bunch of other projects, my superego relentlessly pursued me with the question: “Are you doing enough?” This wretched […]
Just over a year ago, in looking at a minor liturgical change announced by Pope Francis, I drew on the work of D.W. Winnicott to help better understand some of the papal language about the […]
Even now, in 2019, the First Vatican Council (1869-70) haunts us still. It has, in many ways, paralyzed Catholics and kept them from thinking more radically about what is needed in this dark hour. It […]
Expectations for the ongoing Summit in Rome on sex abuse in the Church are rather low, not without good reason. Personally, I am not expecting much of the pope and bishops, and will not be […]
My involvement with the ecumenical movement began just over thirty years, as a high-school student. In 1991 I was in Australia at the seventh general assembly of the World Council of Churches, just in time […]
Nearly two decades ago, in another country, and on the eve of a prominent and much-watched episcopal appointment, I wrote a lengthy wish-list (for a small upstart Catholic journal that seems to have disappeared) outlining […]
Among some Catholics today, “synodality” is regarded as an ill-defined term perhaps signifying nothing but the covert dismantling of Catholic structures and teaching. Raymond Cardinal Burke, for instance, recently said in an interview with LifeSiteNews […]
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