EUROPE’S WHOLESALE abandonment of its Christian faith is often explained as the inevitable by-product of modern social, economic and political life. But there is far more to the story of Euro-secularization than that, as three ecclesiastics, a Presbyterian minister and two Italian priests demonstrated this past Christmas.

by Father Robert W. Blauvelt

SOME PEOPLE HAVE profound spiritual experiences praying in a church or contemplating a sunset or starry sky. I had one while looking at a weather-beaten farmhouse near Atlantic City, N.J.

It was unfortunate that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, recently described “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family, as a “paradigm shift.” Perhaps the cardinal meant “paradigm shift” in some sense other than … paradigm-shift-as-rupture.

THE DOMINICAN Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist – the name itself is a prayer. When I first met the community in 2000, it was only three years old and already growing rapidly. The Sisters’ full-length white habits and generous smiles bespoke their total self-gift and corresponding joy. In these religious sisters, I recognized the fulfillment of an unexpressed longing of my heart. Though life would bear me far from this moment, I never forgot.

IN THE HISTORY of U.S. Catholic higher education since World War II, three seminal moments stand out: Msgr. John Tracy Ellis’ 1955 article, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life;” the 1967 Land O’Lakes statement, “The Idea of a Catholic University;” and the day Don J. Briel began the Catholic Studies Program, and the Catholic Studies movement, at the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities.

IN OUR FAMILY, we never had any priests or nuns. As a boy, my brother and I were altar boys in Middletown, N.Y., but we never became close friends to any priests because when I was 11, my family moved back to Brooklyn.

THIS PAST DEC. 18, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the department of external relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, received an honorary degree from the Faculty of Theology of Apulia in Bari, on Italy’s Adriatic coast. During his remarks on that occasion, Metropolitan Hilarion thanked the Holy See “per la sua posizione di equilibrio riguardo al conflitto in corso in Ucraina [for its balanced position regarding the conflict underway in Ukraine].” Did anyone in the Vatican blush in shame at that compliment? A lot of high-ranking Roman churchmen should have.