Thomas Merton taught me to value self-denial, but a bout of depression forced me to question whether asceticism was the healthiest response to my life.
Pope Francis’s gift of St. Peter’s relics to the Orthodox patriarch is remarkable. Rather than righting a previous wrong, it constitutes a genuine self-emptying.
In dealing with bishops who engage in sexual misconduct, the USCCB seems to think that bishops can police themselves, without lay input. We need a better system.
The Catholic Church now has a stronger theology of women deacons than it did during the fraught time of Paul VI. But now political conditions are less auspicious.
Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo has released excerpts from letters with Theodore McCarrick, revealing more details about informal sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI.
A video made by the Archdiocese of Bucharest in anticipation of Pope Francis’s visit to Romania kindles a spirit too often lacking in the American church: joy.
The recent UN report on the rapid loss of biodiversity failed to arouse our concern. But endangered ecosystems reflect our gravely sinful habits of consumption.
Seminaries still have a role to play, and should not be abolished. But they should no longer be factories for clericalism, elitism, and misogyny, as they often are.
The only adequate response to the clergy sex-abuse crisis is a paschal response: death to one way of being and resurrection to a truly new way of life.
Despite its ‘motivated blindness,’ which allowed the abuse crisis to metastasize in the church over decades, the Vatican finally takes steps toward systemic change.
Contrary to the narrative put forward by major news outlets, the resignation of the all-female board at ‘Women-Church-World’ was not caused by clericalism.
Some Catholics have critiqued the Document on Human Fraternity for its theology of religion, but little attention has been paid to its reception in the Arab world.
The history of the Children's Crusade deepens my understanding of the present: yes, the “little ones” suffer, but they retain a sense of dignity, even hope.
Pope Francis is a highly original and supple thinker, with a breadth of knowledge accumulated over five decades. A new book fleshes out his intellectual journey.
The defamation of Cardinal Toribio Ticona follows an all-too-familiar pattern, as one of Pope Francis’s appointments becomes a proxy in church culture wars
The four-day Vatican summit on sex abuse revealed an unsettling paradox: the hierarchy practicing reform, and victims’ groups scorning of a missed opportunity
The grand-jury report does not substantiate the prevailing script about how bishops let predators get away with committing and recommitting their crimes
The twin phenomena of integralism and intransigentism, on the rise among some US Catholics, can actually be construed as ways of leaving Catholicism behind
Greg Burke brought an American way of doing business to a dysfunctional press office. But he quickly grew weary of the Vatican’s culture of caution and cover-up
Rather than further controversy over nomenclature, the church needs a theology adequate to the current scientific understanding of sexuality and gender
Scapegoating gay priests and pining for a world in which most Catholics agree with church teaching on birth control is no way to confront the abuse crisis
Synod delegates have become increasingly outspoken about young people on the margins, calling particular attention to the suffering of migrants and refugees
