In a letter ostensibly written to support the bishops of the US, Pope Francis has actually made life considerably more difficult for them. In his letter on the Trump administration’s immigration policies the Pontiff makes an argument that is poorly informed, easily rebutted, and likely to...

My grandmother died yesterday at the age of 96. There is no single person to whom I owe a greater debt for imparting to me my Catholic faith than her. I have explained why in numerous Facebook posts over the years and in a Catholic Herald piece commemorating the centennial of Our Lady of...

This week, with the publication of his new book, Pope Francis has added one important link to the chain of evidence regarding the fight against Vatican corruption. In April 2012, Pope Benedict created a special commission of three senior cardinals (Herranz, Tomko, and DeGiorgi) to investigate...

I am praying for Pope Francis who, according to a report published a few minutes before I began to type this column, remains in critical condition. As my Catholic Culture colleague Phil Lawler notes, it is the wisest and best thing we can do for the Pope. Not following “the very excitable...

[Young men] should realize that this quotation from Cicero applies in a certain sense to them: “It is not…so great a distinction to know Latin as it is a disgrace not to know it.”  Pope St. John Paul II, 1978 Like many Catholics, I’ve wanted to learn Latin for...

The Synod on Synodality—a project on which Pope Francis embarked in 2021, a project that spawned hundreds of meetings and thousands of pages of verbiage, a project that threatened to go on forever—has finally ended. Or has it? Officially the Synod closed on October 26, having...

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...

In his new book Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries, Catholic philosopher Sebastian Morello promotes so-called “Hermetic magic”* as an important part of the spiritual revival of Western civilization. How can a Catholic possibly promote magic as an integral part of the faith? Watch...

It always happens this way: Less than a week after the election of a new Pope, Vatican journalists are confident (at least they tell us they are confident) that they know exactly what happened in the conclave. But there’s a problem with that claim. Everyone who was present in the Sistine...

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...