On Aug. 30, Msgr. John (Jack) O’Brien died after a long battle with cancer. Many people may not have known him, but when I was a newly ordained priest, I was sent to him for my first assignment. He was the right kind of pastor for me as a newly ordained, and I learned a great deal from him.
It’s a safe bet that “Mother Mary Lange” is not a household name in most U.S. Catholic circles. That unhappy state of affairs may change, though, thanks to a courageous initiative now underway in Baltimore, one of America’s most troubled cities. Who was the Servant of God Mother Mary Lange, O.S.P.?
In the summer before the Second Vatican Council opened, Pope John XXIII met with Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens in the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. “I know what my part in the Council will be,” the Pope told the Belgian archbishop. “It will be to suffer.” Pope John was prescient, and not just because the Council’s opening weeks would prove contentious; shortly before Vatican II began its work, the Pope was diagnosed with the painful cancer that would kill him in less than a year.
This past June 25, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States — usually dubbed the “Vatican’s foreign minister” — told a press conference that he and his colleagues didn’t believe that the Vatican’s speaking out publicly on the massive repression underway in Hong Kong “would make any difference whatever.”
In the three decades since the Revolution of 1989, Poland’s many cultural achievements include mastering the craft of creating the 21st-century historical museum.
In his pastoral exhortation “The Joy of Love” — or Amoris Laetitia — which he encourages us to review and reflect on in its fifth anniversary and on the occasion of the Year of the Family under the patronage of St. Joseph, the Roman Pontiff offers important advice on how parents should carry out such tremendous responsibility.
On the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2013, Pope Francis completed the work of the 2012 Synod of Bishops with the apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), issuing a ringing call for the entire Church to “embark on a new chapter of evangelization.” Catholicism, the Pope urged, must move from maintenance to mission: “from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry.”
Given everything else going on these days, it may seem strange that a 129-year-old encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, founding father of modern Catholic social doctrine, should have become a shuttlecock in the volleys exchanged by conservative Ameri- can legal theorists and commentators.
Thanks to the pandemic, it’s been two years since I was last in Krakow, where for three decades I’ve done extensive research and taught great students while forming friendships with many remarkable people.
The Holy Father, Pope Francis, issued a Motu Proprio (a document issued by the Pope himself which has a legal effect in the Church) on July 16, 2021, called “Traditionis Custodes” (The “Guardians of the Tradition”).
