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.

The entire purpose of Lent is to prepare us for the glory of Easter and its revelation of the destiny that God first intended for humanity “in the beginning”: the destiny that Christ made possible after the Fall through the paschal mystery of his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. As the Church concludes its Lenten journey, perhaps we might ponder three great themes that shape the spiritual rhythms of this noble penitential season.

If every crisis contains within itself an opportunity, though, the new Donatism offers Rome an opportunity for some essential clarifications.

For many years, John Allen was the best Anglophone Vaticanista ever, a man of great kindness who graciously helped everyone on that beat who had the sense to counsel with him.

Forty-seven years ago, Pope John Paul II issued his first encyclical, “Redemptor hominis” (“The Redeemer of Man”).

This year, the Rite of Election may have been done differently than in years past. However, it is a powerful reminder that faith is a dialogue. It begins with a human heart seeking truth and concludes with a divine invitation.

Angelo Gugel, the Papal Chamber Assistant to Popes John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, died at the age of 90 on Jan. 15.

The “Melian Dialogue,” from Thucydides’ classic “History of the Peloponnesian War,” is the foundational text of the Realist school of international relations theory.