John Allen was the best Anglophone Vaticanista ever, a man of great kindness who graciously helped everyone on that beat who had the sense to counsel with him.

Today, in a global culture dominated by the notion that everything in the human condition is plastic, malleable, and changeable by acts of human will — the insistence that nothing is given — the question on which the future of Christian mission and service to the world depends is, “Who are we?” Are we simply congealed stardust, the happy but accidental byproduct of billions of years of random cosmic biochemical forces?

What John Paul observed to the General Council of the Polish episcopate in June 1979 — that Catholicism has effective weapons against tyranny when it is “strong with its own strength,” its spiritual strength — remains true today, not least with respect to Russia and China.

He was a quiet man who sought no attention and knew he was serving a saint. May he rest in peace, reunited with his old master at the Throne of Grace.

I do not agree with those who claim that Mr. Miller’s chest-thumping effectively gave Vladimir Putin carte blanche to conquer Ukraine (and Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states, and chunks of Poland and Norway), while giving the green light to Xi Jinping to ingest Taiwan.

As of Feb. 6, he will not be archbishop of New York. But Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in good health and full of energy, is by no means at the end of his ministry or influence.

In the face of these unmistakable signs of cultural, even civilizational, decay, the Church has its work cut out for it.

It is tragic that this abandonment of theological sanity and pastoral responsibility coincides with the 60th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, in which German bishops and theologians (including the future Pope Benedict XVI) played significant roles.

The bishops speak in the public square on a host of issues, and they do so with the voice of public reason, not as “culture-warriors” (another silly epithet applied to them by bears of little brain).

Surveys indicate that reading books is dropping precipitously across all age groups. This is a tragedy in itself; it’s also a social disaster, as a post-literate society risks becoming a post-rational society. All the more reason, then, to consider giving books for Christmas: books that entertain, inform, and open new horizons of understanding.