Analysis

Fidel Castro is dead. To say those words is so strange. I’ve never known a moment when he wasn’t alive. Castro came to power seven years before I was born, and I’m almost 50. I’ve […]

In 1152-1154 Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear was on a tour of the North, visiting Norway and Sweden by the instigation of Pope Eugene III. During the summer of 1152 he presided over a meeting in Linköping […]

When the pot is boiling, turn down the heat. You can’t be sure, but that could well have been part of the reasoning behind Pope’s Francis’s decision to choose as topic of the next world […]

Apropos of nothing in particular—but I suppose of several things in general, like the continuing turmoil over Amoris laetitia, the Buenos Aires directives, the Roman diocesan protocol, and a torrent of commentary (including some by orthodox writers), that, […]

The seventeenth century philosopher, Rene Descartes, is best remembered for his pithy little aphorism, “I think, therefore I am.” His point was profound, though not entirely original. St. Augustine made essentially the same point twelve […]

Based on his numerous personnel appointments, it is clear what type of Church leadership Pope Francis prefers. American Catholics have learned this through the election of Blaise Cupich as Archbishop of Chicago and his imminent […]

Western society’s understanding of elemental, foundational concepts like “male” and “female” (Gen I: 27) is disintegrating, and I fear we will see more manifestations of this disintegration even within those ranks so precious to our […]

Since publishing Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy in 2011, I have continued to follow closely discussions of Orthodox-Catholic relations. Now, in 2016, I rejoice that the international Orthodox-Catholic dialogue has just come to an agreed […]

Regarding the Christian burial of suicides the Pio-Benedictine Code differed from the Johanno-Pauline Code in that the former law expressly listed suicides as among those “public and manifest sinners” ineligible for ecclesiastical burial (1917 CIC 1240), while […]

Canon 868 of the Johanno-Pauline Code regulates the administration of baptism to infants (basically, kids up to about age seven). Currently the law restricts the Catholic ministration of baptism to infants for whom there is a […]