Pope Is Charting the Church of the Future

by Cindy Wooden Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation (See Page 11) on sharing the joy of the Gospel is a call to faith-filled optimism, recognizing challenges but knowing that God’s love and lordship will prevail, said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, introducing the text to the media. The archbishop, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, told […]

Fog Represents the Cloud of Unknowing

by John Garvey It was foggy this morning. I found it cozy. I always have. I love the fog. When I was a boy, we lived on a small lake in Pennsylvania. I liked to get up early to see the fog sitting on the bay. When the sun rose, it would roll out toward […]

Focused on the New Evangelization

by George Weigel There’s a lot for U.S. Catholics to be thankful for at Thanksgiving 2013: seminaries that have turned the corner from the doldrums of the immediate past and are now full, or getting close; a reform of the liturgical reform that is bringing a new sense of the sacred back to Catholic worship; […]

Sex, Truth and the Illumination of Guilt

by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk Guilt has gotten a lot of bad press recently. We live in an age where guilt is practically always something bad, something to get past with the help of a shrink. Particularly when discussing sex, people will declare that religion and morality do nothing more than make people feel guilty. Andrew […]

JFK After 50 Years

by George Weigel ON NOV. 22, 1963, the seventh grade at Baltimore’s Cathedral School was in gym class when we got word that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. A half-hour later, while we were climbing the stairs back to 7B’s classroom, Sister Dolorine’s voice came over the public address system. She announced that […]

Stories of Spiritual Combat in WWII

by George Weigel THE REV. GEORGE William Rutler, S.T.D., a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a man of parts: graduate of Dartmouth, Oxford and Rome’s Angelicum (“the Dominican faculty that flunked Galileo,” he informs me); linguist, painter, violinist and boxer; and preacher extraordinaire. One of Catholicism’s most successful pastors, he has been […]

When Being Right Means Doing Wrong

by Erick Rommel PART OF BEING a parent involves responsibility. That means protecting and providing for a child. But as children grow, parents must help them transition from a person who is provided for into a person who can provide for herself, a person responsible enough to do the right thing. A great lesson illustrating […]

Hemrick

The Damaging Effects of Alcohol and Drugs

by Father Eugene F. Hemrick Should we turn our heads away, call the police or shut it down? These questions were posed in an article about Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, who was photographed in a house full of young people attending a wild drinking party. Undoubtedly, excessive drinking is one of the greatest […]

‘Pilgrimage’ Offers Rome at Home

by George Weigel In the middle centuries of the first millennium, the Bishop of Rome celebrated the Eucharist with his people during Lent in a striking way. Each day, the pope would lead a procession of Roman clergy and laity from one church – the collecta, or gathering point – to another, the statio or […]

Special Graces When Close Friends Die

by Carol Powell The obituaries of Father James DiGiacomo and Regina Barry appeared in the same issue of The Tablet (Sept. 28). Both of them were personal friends of my family and me for many years. My husband, David, first met Father DiGiacomo when he was a high school Latin student in Brooklyn Prep. Father […]