What can his fellow Catholics do for Jimmy Lai at the moment? We can hold him in prayer every day. We can urge the administration to continue to press for Jimmy’s release, and we can urge our representatives and senators to press the administration to keep pressing the Chinese regime.

It’s probably fair to say that John Paul II began his papacy with an impression of American Catholicism not dissimilar from that of other European intellectuals: The U.S. Church had an enviable network of institutions — ranging from parishes to health care and social service facilities to schools, colleges, and universities — but the Church was more wealthy than cultured and lived too comfortably within the American status quo.

Repetition, it’s said, can be the mother of learning. So, in light of recent Catholic debates about the pursuit of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, permit me to reprise, with slight adjustments, parts of a column from 24 years ago. 

Legislative vigilance is essential. So is building the culture of life by expanding access to palliative end-of-life care.

“Centesimus annus” was a call to think about free politics and free economics as more than mechanisms. Democracy and the market, the Pope John Paul II insisted, are not machines that can run by themselves.

Over these 75 years, I have experienced the vocation of sanctity in so many ways, each of which has left its imprint on my soul and my spiritual life.

Pardon the Latin-rooted neologism, but if “patricide” works for murdering your father and “regicide” for taking out a king, why not “ecclesiacide” for trying to kill an entire Church?

The Church’s pastors should avoid causing further confusion by helping God’s people embrace the mysteries of faith in love.

I had a couple of lengthy and, I thought, productive e-mail exchanges with one of the authors of a recent Wall Street Journal Saturday Essay” before its publication. I reprise those exchanges here.

It’s good to remember this Holy Week that we are empowered to get up and continue the journey because Christ got up from his three falls.