An interest in life at the Church’s administrative center is fine; an obsession with it, fueled by ill-informed blogs and social media, is not.

American public officials are more likely to be heard if they call on our parent civilization to reclaim the nobility that defeated fascism, Nazism, and communism: a defense of human dignity in which Americans and Europeans contested for the future shoulder to shoulder.

The annual 40-day pilgrimage through the desert of Lent, patterned on the Lord’s forty days in the Judaean wilderness in preparation for his public ministry, is the preeminent moment in the Church’s year of grace for the purification of memory — especially our memories of the successes and failures of living missionary discipleship since Pentecost 2024 closed last year’s season of paschal celebration.

Those responsible for devising U.S. foreign policy should recognize how that train wreck helps define Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine, even as it conditions any resolution of the war worthy of the name “peace.”

The willful participation of physicians and other medical professionals in the practice of abortion flatly contradicts the Hippocratic Oath — long the moral framework for sound medical practice — in its original form.

In the spirit of happy browsing, here are some suggestions for Christmas book-giving (not “gifting”!) at a historical moment that needs equal doses of realism and hope.

Given an ever-darkening international landscape and the pandering of both parties to our baser instincts, the realistic conclusion is that whoever wins the White House, hard times are coming.

An authentic Catholic education is imbued with a Catholic worldview throughout the curriculum.

A quarter-century later, the memory of that silent embrace remains. So does my gratitude that Witness to Hope continues to strengthen the faith of Catholics and lead seekers to Christ and his Church.

Samuel Johnson, that great coiner of aphorisms, averred that “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” In that Johnsonian spirit, here are some reminders about what has been happening in Ukraine, for Senator J.D. Vance and others who persist in certain confusions about the situation and its implications.