At an international symposium in honor of the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, held in Paris on Feb. 11, I offered closing remarks on what the Church might do to combat aggressive secularism in Europe. As the same prescriptions apply in…

Carolyn Gordon Tate, a major figure in the literary renaissance of the 20th century American South, once wrote Flannery O’Connor of the impact that her conversion to Catholicism had had on her writing. As Miss O’Connor recalled in a letter,…

In late February, Professor Marjorie Garber of Harvard came to the University of Notre Dame as the Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer for 2009-2010. Among other engagements, she spoke to a class on “Breaking the Code: Transvestism and Gay Identity,” the subject…

In late 2009, the Holy See and the Russian Federation agreed to full diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, bringing the total of such exchanges to 178—a remarkable achievement, considering that, in 1978, the Holy See had full diplomatic relations…

Four days after my son-in-law, Rob Susil, re-entered Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he would die of an aggressive sarcoma on Feb. 5, the Church marked the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord and read the Gospel of Simeon’s prophecy…

Connoisseurs of political kamikaze runs will long debate what finished off Martha Coakley in the recent Massachusetts election to fill the seat Edward M. Kennedy held for 47 years.

The baseball fan in me likes to think it…

In his Jan. 11 address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI continued to carve out an interesting Catholic position on ecology. The Pope insists that care for creation is a moral obligation that…

This past Dec. 28, I was jolted out of my morning fog at 8 a.m. Mass when the deacon offered this petition: “For those who are considering abortion: may our prayers and the intercession of the Holy Innocents whom…

One of the sadnesses of the reformed liturgical calendar is the loss of “Sundays after Epiphany,” which, with the frequent translation of the solemnity itself to a Sunday (this year, Jan. 3), diminishes the impact of what ought to…

On Dec. 7, 1859, 12 American seminarians, who had previously been studying at Rome’s Urban College, moved to Humility Street near the Trevi Fountain and launched the North American College under the protection of Blessed Pius IX. One of…