Notre-Dame, and many churches in France, are owned by the state and merely used by the church. That gave the French government, and President Macron, a big voice in the restoration project.

In the language of Catholic social teaching, we might say that voters doubt whether the political system in which they participate sustains the common good.

A proposed assisted-suicide law in Britain does not serve compassion. Instead it presents an illusion of final autonomy.

A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, by Father Terrance Klein

Pope Francis received a new, emission-free, all-electric popemobile from representatives of Mercedes-Benz, the German car manufacturer that has been supplying vehicles for the popes for nearly 100 years.

At a general audience, Pope Francis said that homilies should run under 10 minutes and be guided by the Holy Spirit.

“In Hong Kong, we have our wounds that we need to heal,” Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J., the bishop of Hong Kong, told America’s Vatican correspondent in this exclusive interview.

John Banville is surely the only crime novelist in recent memory who has won the Booker Prize and is regularly rumored to be in the running for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“Joe Biden said one thing and did the opposite. A father’s love meant more to the president than keeping his word.”

The possibility of a “fourth order” of deaconess in the Catholic Church has become part of the conversation around women deacons. But is it the right response?