Analysis

Last Saturday, the synod closed with the voting on the final report and with a final address by the Pope, which was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation. The week of high drama ended with […]

Upon becoming director of media relations for the American bishops in late 1969, I quickly made a crucial discovery about my new employers. With just a handful of exceptions, the bishops were painfully naïve about […]

During the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican, the phrase “doctrinal development” was bandied about by some bishops. For instance, Reinhard Cardinal Marx of Germany, responding to a question at a […]

This Synod is extraordinary in more ways than one. It is extra-ordinary in the simple sense of being merely preparatory to the actual or ordinary Synod that will take place in twelve months’ time. But […]

A recent study by the Pew Research Center finds significant differences between younger and older liberals, differences that are not encouraging either to orthodox religious believers or to the older liberals. The Next Generation Left […]

This year has marked a sort of second coming of “the Rapture”. On June 29th, HBO launched a new series, “The Leftovers”, based on the 2011 novel of the same title, written by Tom Perrotta, […]

Although ecumenism has received increased attention from Church authorities at all levels in the decades following the Second Vatican Council, during his short period of time as pontiff Pope Francis has approached this area with […]

Catholic religious leaders have long supported the labor movement in the United States because it has promoted the economic wellbeing of workers and their families. The Irish, Italian, and Slavic immigrants of the past, and […]

“We have been so changed that we are no longer at home in the culture and church in which we find ourselves.” This quotation from the keynote address (PDF) of Franciscan Sister Nancy Schreck to […]