Cardinal Zen And Jimmy Lai

Tertullian, the first major Christian theologian to write in Latin, is thought to have coined the maxim Semen est sanguis Christianorum, typically (and rather freely) translated as “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Dobbs Hysteria & Russian Disinfo

There are striking parallels between the Russian disinformation campaign that continues to foul the global communications space in the third month of the war on Ukraine and the hysterical screeds of pro-abortion American politicians after a draft Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case leaked.

New Patron Saint For Catholic News

As of May 15, Catholic journalists around the world will be able to count one of their number among the saints, as Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite killed at the Dachau concentration camp in 1942, is canonized in St. Peter’s Square.

The Russian Path That Wasn’t Taken

I’ve been thinking about Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” and its relationship to a deceased Russian Orthodox priest.

The Fraternal Correction

In the golden age of the Catholic episcopate — the days of great Church Fathers like Cyprian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo in the early and mid-first millennium — bishops were not infrequently in contact with each other, encouraging, consulting, and, when necessary, correcting.

A Wartime Meditation

In both the Roman and Byzantine liturgical calendars, Lent 2022 has coincided with a brutal war in Ukraine. That war was launched by Russia’s Vladimir Putin for an ignoble, imperial cause.

Salem and the Smoke of Satan

On May 13, 1982, Pope John Paul II flew to Portugal on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for his life having been spared the year before

Is There Ever A ‘Just War’?

Every war is a defeat for humanity, because men and women endowed with reason should be able to resolve their differences without mass violence.

Russian Orthodox Awakening

For years, the two leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church with whom Pope Francis met by videoconference on March 16 — Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, and Metropolitan Hilarion, the Church’s chief ecumenical officer — have worked to buttress Vladimir Putin’s efforts to reconstitute a simulacrum of the Soviet Union in the name of a Russkiy mir (“Russian world”).

Archbishop Viganó Is Wrong on Ukraine

One of the minor characters in Evelyn Waugh’s World War II trilogy, “Sword of Honor,” is the commander of a super-secret military intelligence unit, Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole: a conspiracy theorist constantly connecting dots that no rational person would imagine connecting or even think connectable.