Articles by Russell Shaw

What is the meaning of Christmas? That question may not be quite as simple as it sounds. For many people, Christmas means big, jovial meals with family and friends, singing seasonal hymns in church, exchanging […]

These are not the best of times for Catholic marriage in America. Numbers illustrate the point. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, in 2020—when U.S. Catholic population stood at 73 million—Catholic […]

Recently, without intending it, I found myself reading at the same time the latest document from the Vatican’s Synod office and The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. The juxtaposition of these two […]

A few days ago Americans awoke to the news that a man shouting, “Where’s Nancy?” had staged a hammer attack on the 82-year-old husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Weeks earlier a man […]

What was the Second Vatican Council all about? With the 60th anniversary of the council’s opening now close at hand, you can still get an argument about that. Instead of consulting the “spirit” of Vatican […]

In mid-November the American bishops, gathered in general assembly, will choose a successor to Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles to serve a three-year term as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. A […]

In most people’s vocabularies, “equity” is a positive word, signifying fairness or even-handedness. In the vocabulary of today’s woke social justice warriors, though, equity can signify something far from benign. Writing in First Things, a […]

These are not the best of times for America’s men and boys. Recent data suggest the extent of the problem, without getting at its roots. Men now make up only 40.5% of college enrollment. Men’s […]