Reality is often a bitter pill to swallow. A good comedian is very intelligent and has a keen sense of irony. Irony requires the ability to contrast the way things are with the way things should be. Religion has similar qualities. Intelligent irony without faith may be amusing, but often...

This summer Pope Leo will face two serious challenges to his authority: one from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which has announced plans to consecrate new bishops without a papal mandate; the other from the German bishops’ conference, which is introducing a ritual for the blessing of...

Happy St. Jerome’s Day! Or maybe not so happy. News broke yesterday on the Catholic Bible Talk blog that a Catholic Edition of the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (NRSVue) has been approved by the USCCB. According to the Friendship Press YouTube channel, from which Catholic...

Many faithful Catholics were surprised and dismayed to learn that Pope Leo had met with Father James Martin, SJ, in a private audience last week. I share their dismay. But not their surprise. We all knew, from the moment he was elected, that Pope Leo XIV would not repudiate the policies of his...

Alex Begin is a veteran of the liturgy wars. For the better part of four decades in Michigan and Canada, he has been behind the most successful traditional Catholic movement the world over. Prior to last summer’s crackdown, the Archdiocese of Detroit was home to twenty-eight Latin...

Throughout the Western world, Catholic Mass attendance has declined dramatically since Vatican II. That is an established fact. But did the Council—or its aftermath—cause the decline, or was the decline part of an overall cultural trend that the Council could not reverse? That question...

Previous installment The first decade of the fourth century, from about 302 to 313, is one of the most remarkable in history. In...

Readers of this column know that I occasionally opine on matters of Biblical scholarship about which I have no expertise. Buckle up because I am about to do it again. In fact, it is because I have no expertise that I want to say something about this. Something on behalf of us little people, the...

President Trump has now made and repeated a blatant falsehood: that Pope Leo “thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” In a May 5 appearance on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Trump said: “The Pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to...

Steven Greydanus, a deacon of the Archdiocese of Newark and former film critic for the National Catholic Register, has penned a “longread” Substack article against Bishop Robert Barron. Here’s the short version: Bishop Barron leans right. This pains Catholics like Greydanus, who...