A change of presidential administrations typically leads to changes in U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad, especially at the ambassadorial level. This, in turn, leads to speculations, some of them zany, about the post of U.S. ambassador to the Holy See (typically mislabeled as “U.S. ambassador to the Vatican”). Herewith, then, are some clarifications and demystifications about this position.

A friend told me recently that bookstores were making something of a comeback. I hope that’s true because browsing bookstores is one of life’s great pleasures. In the spirit of happy browsing, here are some suggestions for Christmas book-giving (not “gifting”!) at a historical moment that needs equal doses of realism and hope.

During his years as professor of fundamental theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella was often cited by American seminarians as their favorite  professor — an exponent of dynamic orthodoxy whose engaging classroom style was a blessed relief from the stolid ways of the Roman academy. Later, after Pope John Paul II issued Fides et Ratio [Faith and Reason], the 1998 encyclical that set Voltaire spinning in his grave, the joke in Rome was that, given the text’s likely drafters, the “F” and “R” in Fides and Ratio stood for “Fisichella” and “Ratzinger.”

Dear Senator Vance:

As Americans celebrate a unique national holiday, the origins of which remind us that our democracy is an experiment in ordered liberty “under God,” let me wish you and your family a happy and holy Thanksgiving. You will soon take the oath of office as Vice President of the United States. Several of your predecessors took a dim view of the vice presidency, as you surely know. The first vice president, John Adams, called it the “most insignificant office” ever devised by the mind of man.

The Venerable Andrei Sheptytsky, who died eighty years ago on November 1, 1944, was one of 20th century Catholicism’s outstanding figures, whose remarkable life and heroic ministry as leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church spanned 43 years, two world wars, five pontificates, Stalin’s terror-famine (the “Holodomor,” in which at least six million Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death), and a half-dozen changes of government in the territories in which he served.

In the annals of historical boorishness, it would be hard to find something more egregious than the Holy See’s timing as it renewed its 2018 agreement with the People’s Republic of China, which allows the Chinese Communist Party a significant role in the appointment of Catholic bishops.