Jesuit School Spotlight
Homework, basketball and private equity: This is Verbum Dei High School in South L.A.
Students at Verbum Dei spend four days a week in school and one day a week in a corporate work-study program.
News Analysis
Pope Francis is drawing on Vatican II to radically change how the Catholic Church is governed
After nine years, Pope Francis has unveiled a major reform of the Vatican Curia—though its emphases may sound familiar.
Of Many Things
In Memoriam: Drew Christansen, S.J.
In Memoriam | Drew Christiansen, S.J. | February 20, 1945—April 6, 2022 | 13th Editor in Chief, 2005 to 2012
Your Take
Why women can lead the church
Readers respond to story about the future of women in the church in light of a new constitution for the Roman Curia.
Editorials
Biden promised to let in 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. But the administration isn’t prepared to meet that goal.
President Biden has an opportunity in this crisis. The American people want to help Ukrainians threatened by Vladimir Putin’s vicious war.
Short Take
We have a moral duty to protect Ukrainian civilians—but that doesn’t mean going to war with Russia
Does the “responsibility to protect” doctrine call for Western action in Ukraine? Perhaps not through military intervention, but certainly in efforts toward recovery, reconstruction and reconciliation.
Dispatches
Partisanship is becoming a religion unto itself. How do Catholics respond in the voting booth?
Notre Dame researchers are exploring a surprisingly complex aspect of Catholic life: how Catholics vote. The report focused on the unique pressures and behaviors of “seamless garment” Catholics in making electoral decisions.
The Canadian church’s leadership is changing. What could it mean for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples?
To face the challenge of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, Canada’s bishops will need to reinvent themselves.
A Ukrainian Catholic school in Chicago is welcoming new students who have fled the war
The St. Nicholas Cathedral School, located in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, has welcomed eight students who have left Ukraine since Feb. 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Brazilian bishop: I hope the synod will end clericalism in the church
“It is clericalism that prevents the church today from being missionary,” Bishop Cipollini said. “I have great hope that the synod on synodality can make clericalism collapse—perhaps not entirely, but at least in its major strongholds.”
Features
Have Catholics been praying the Our Father all wrong?
Catholics, that is to say, have not necessarily been praying the Our Father wrongly, but too often we have not been praying it fully, either. While we are busy trying to get it right, we neglect to make it our own and discover its vast permutations.
Our Lady of Manhattan: What I learned praying the rosary while biking around New York City
During the pandemic, Matt Malone, S.J., e-biked and prayed around the perimeter of Manhattan—which happens to look almost exactly like the pattern of a rosary.
Faith and Reason
The unholy ideology driving both Putin and Patriarch Kirill in the Russia-Ukraine war
The war is not about Russia capturing Ukraine; it is about Russia challenging the Western world, which Mr. Putin and Patriarch Kirill both regard as evil.
Faith in Focus
Want to feel closer to God at Mass? Sit in the front pew.
The practice of sitting in the front pew has helped to focus my own wandering mind.
Are you embarrassed to say grace in public? Don’t be.
But don’t make a big show of it either. There is a fine line between being a witness and being a weirdo.
What makes a parish successful? Hint: It is not a particular liturgical style
What is it that draws so many people to a church’s pews week after week?
Books
Review: The hallmarks of Black Catholic spirituality in the work of Toni Morrison
The reader can see God in all areas of Toni Morrison’s characters’ circumstances—in the “magic,” in the pain and suffering, and in the call to healing and wholeness that leads to life.
Review: Catholics and religious liberty in early American history
If Catholics wanted to be tolerated in the early years of the Maryland Colony, they had to prove their loyalty—first to the Stuarts, then to Parliament, then the House of Hanover and then the fledgling American republic.
Review: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the vocation of the poet
Neeli Cherkovski’s expanded edition of his biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a book by “a poet who set out to celebrate another poet.”
Review: Hip-hop’s divine blend of poetry, song and story
Alejandro Nava begins his formal analysis by situating hip-hop as something that “recovers the oral, rhythmic, and melodic nature of ancient scriptural transmission.”
Film
Interview: Mark Wahlberg has been wanting to make a movie like ‘Father Stu’ for years
Wahlberg recently called his new film, “Father Stu,” the “most important movie I’ve ever done” and “the best movie I’ve ever been a part of.”
Television
‘Sex and the City’ didn’t change. We did.
HBO’s “And Just Like That,” like “Sex and the City” before it, is an exaggerated funhouse mirror of its viewers’ world.
Poetry
Zoo Announcement
Thank you for never complaining about being in a cage.
Icon
My defense is these:
Faith
Homework, basketball and private equity: This is Verbum Dei High School in South L.A.
Students at Verbum Dei spend four days a week in school and one day a week in a corporate work-study program.
Want to feel closer to God at Mass? Sit in the front pew.
The practice of sitting in the front pew has helped to focus my own wandering mind.
Why women can lead the church
Readers respond to story about the future of women in the church in light of a new constitution for the Roman Curia.
In Memoriam: Drew Christansen, S.J.
In Memoriam | Drew Christiansen, S.J. | February 20, 1945—April 6, 2022 | 13th Editor in Chief, 2005 to 2012
Have Catholics been praying the Our Father all wrong?
Catholics, that is to say, have not necessarily been praying the Our Father wrongly, but too often we have not been praying it fully, either. While we are busy trying to get it right, we neglect to make it our own and discover its vast permutations.
Pope Francis is drawing on Vatican II to radically change how the Catholic Church is governed
After nine years, Pope Francis has unveiled a major reform of the Vatican Curia—though its emphases may sound familiar.
The unholy ideology driving both Putin and Patriarch Kirill in the Russia-Ukraine war
The war is not about Russia capturing Ukraine; it is about Russia challenging the Western world, which Mr. Putin and Patriarch Kirill both regard as evil.
Are you embarrassed to say grace in public? Don’t be.
But don’t make a big show of it either. There is a fine line between being a witness and being a weirdo.
Brazilian bishop: I hope the synod will end clericalism in the church
“It is clericalism that prevents the church today from being missionary,” Bishop Cipollini said. “I have great hope that the synod on synodality can make clericalism collapse—perhaps not entirely, but at least in its major strongholds.”
What makes a parish successful? Hint: It is not a particular liturgical style
What is it that draws so many people to a church’s pews week after week?
Our Lady of Manhattan: What I learned praying the rosary while biking around New York City
During the pandemic, Matt Malone, S.J., e-biked and prayed around the perimeter of Manhattan—which happens to look almost exactly like the pattern of a rosary.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts