Essay

Readings: Jos 5:9a, 10-12 Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7 2 Cor 5:17-21 Lk 15:1-3, 11-32 “How could a loving God send people to hell?”  It’s a question I’ve heard many times from people who balk at […]

Last week, during the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, I had the enormous privilege of sharing a breakfast with Fr. Robert Spitzer, the inter-galactically smart Jesuit, who once served as president of Gonzaga University and who […]

Twenty-five years ago, one of the 20th century’s greatest Catholic theologians passed away in the Avenue de Breteuil in Paris in the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Born in 1896 as the […]

It is time to review some basic principles that bear upon the question of the morality of contraception. Meaning of contraception: Thing and act First, let us note that the word “contraception” is used to […]

Just a few days ago, I had the enormous privilege of performing my first confirmation as a bishop. It took place at Holy Cross Parish in Moor Park, California, a large, bustling, and bi-lingual parish […]

Even in his very first years on the US Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia already was making a profound impression on the Court, on Washington, and on American life. I matriculated at Georgetown Law shortly […]

Pope Francis’s Wednesday Audience talk of February 3rd addressed the question of the relationship of mercy to justice. “Sacred Scripture presents us with God as infinite mercy,” he stated, “but also as perfect justice. How […]

It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since my son, Stephen, and I spent two months in Rome – all of Lent and Easter Week – preparing a book that would allow readers […]

In an essay published in Italian in L’Osservatore Romano on January 30, 2016, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, discusses the meaning of silence in […]

Editor’s note: This essay appears in He Spoke to Us: Discerning God’s Will in People and Events, by Father George William Rutler. It was originally published in Crisis Magazine, March 1, 2001. Lenten days bring two images immediately to […]