Reading Andrew Sullivan’s collection, ‘Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989-2021,’ made me realize I’d never heard Sullivan mentioned in conversations about Catholic writers. Why wasn’t he there? And why wasn’t I surprised?

The truth is that there was nothing wrong with my first wife when we got married. And there was nothing wrong with me. I don’t need to offer up witnesses, and my privacy, to prove otherwise.

To see headlines suggesting that not having kids is in some way selfish would be painful. But did Pope Francis really say that?

This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J.—standing in for Colleen Dulle —and Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell survey the pope’s plans for the new year.

A charismatic demagogue with millions of devoted followers. New media with little government regulation. The threat of violence in the streets. No, we’re not talking about the 45th president.

“My hope for L.G.B.T. Catholics is that they all feel welcome and comfortable in any parish in the world,” Sister Gramick says. “That they might feel just as much a part of the church as anyone else.”

In a handwritten letter, Pope Francis congratulated Sister Gramick on “50 years of closeness, of compassion and of tenderness” in a ministry that he described as being in “the style of God.”

Why do some members of our church, clergy and laity alike, perceive racial justice movements as more of a threat to the republic than the movement that led to the assault on Congress?

We don’t expect to see a Muppet so completely lose it. But today of all days, Elmo reminds us that it is totally appropriate to call out what is only pretend and say, “No, that’s not right.”

There is considerable anticipation that this year’s march could be the last one with the Roe v. Wade decision hanging in the balance before the Supreme Court.

The “Faith Manifesto,” signed by around 6,000 people, sharply criticizes the demands of the Synodal Path, which amount to a “self-secularization of the church,” Bernhard Meuser said.

“Sometimes we live in a spirit of a ‘parking lot’; we stay parked, without the impulse of desire that carries us forward. We do well to ask: where are we on our journey of faith?”

Your sins cannot cancel the identity you were given in your baptism. But it is possible to forget who you are.

We have learned a lot about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy since The Boston Globe unveiled its investigation in 2002, writes an expert in child protection. That is bringing us closer to the goal of seeing no new cases.

Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, talks with Gloria Purvis about how the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are not as different from ordinary Americans as you might think.

For the first time, a layman and a nun provided the English and Spanish translations of Francis’ weekly catechism lesson rather than a cloaked monsignor, a small but revolutionary change for the Vatican.

“It is a risk, yes: having a child is always a risk, either naturally or by adoption,” Pope Francis said. ”But it is riskier not to have them.”

Joan Didion was capable both of conjuring up the horrors of modern life and of offering solace that there was still a point to it all.

My neighbors lost homes because our political and economic institutions have failed to respond to a crisis they have long known was coming.

The temptation is to fight the ghosts of Modernism by denigrating those working for social justice and “elites” as anti-religious co-conspirators. But this would be a disservice to the truth and to the church.