Francis X. Maier
Senior Fellow
Francis X. Maier is a Senior Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Maier’s work focuses on the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life, with special attention to lay formation and action.
Francis X. Maier is a Senior Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Maier’s work focuses on the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life, with special attention to lay formation and action.
Mr. Maier served as senior adviser and special assistant to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., for 23 years in Denver and Philadelphia. He previously served as editor in chief of the National Catholic Register and as a story analyst and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and New York University’s School of the Arts, he is a former Fellow of the American Film Institute’s Conservatory for Advanced Film Studies, and the inaugural Senior Research Fellow (2020–22) at Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. He is a cofounding board member of the University of Pennsylvania’s Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture and a board member of the Napa Institute and the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS).
His bylined work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, First Things, National Review, The American Spectator, The Catholic Thing, Crisis, This World, America, Commonweal, the New York Times Sunday magazine, Christian Science Monitor, and other national and foreign outlets. His book True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church, will be released by Ignatius Press in early 2024.
Yes, We Have No Bernanos
Francis X. Maier
Today’s lack of first-rank creative talents like Georges Bernanos, the French Catholic novelist and essayist who died in 1948, is a deficit for the Church. It’s also a sign, in much of the “developed” world, of her seeming infertility.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / August 6, 2020
Brave New World Revisited
Francis X. Maier
A new TV production of Brave New World offers a mildly absorbing science fiction tale with lots of glistening flesh and technology. As an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s sobering message, though, it fails.
Articles
First Things / July 30, 2020
Liars Go to Hell
Francis X. Maier
That the ghost of Walter Duranty still has his Pulitzer Prize is an obscenity that warriors of the cancel culture may want to address.
Articles
First Things / July 23, 2020
Paradoxes of Faith in Service to the Supreme Paradox
Francis X. Maier
Henri de Lubac, S.J., understood the human predicament, the grandeur of God’s love, and the beauty of the Church with extraordinary clarity and fidelity.
Articles
The Catholic World Report / July 13, 2020
Escape Clause
Francis X. Maier
As a nation we’re neither as good as our pride imagined, nor as bad as America’s chronic haters – their name is Legion – want us to believe.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / July 4, 2020
Life Lessons: Four Pillars, Three Little Pigs
Francis X. Maier
We have limited time. So how should we use it? What will our lives mean when we finally look back on them? Like it or not, we inevitably choose a path, either by our love or refusal to love; by our actions or our refusals to act.
Articles
Public Discourse / June 14, 2020
All Conflict, All the Time
Francis X. Maier
Nations change when we change. And the latter is the much harder task.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / June 3, 2020
Redeemer of Man
Francis X. Maier
Technology instinctively reshapes a culture toward purely practical action and results. To the Church falls the task of forcing the questions that get people to think about what it means to be truly human.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / May 6, 2020
The Triduum and Easter Joy
Francis X. Maier
Easter is the victory of life over death, our deliverance and liberation in the resurrection of God’s Son. But if our Easter joy this year is mixed with a taste of Good Friday’s myrrh and loss, and a hunger for the Eucharist we can’t satisfy, we should accept it as a gift. It’s a reminder of the precious things we too easily take for granted.
Articles
Public Discourse / April 10, 2020
Justinian’s Flea, Redux
Francis X. Maier
The “civilizational change” wrought by the coronavirus may be less drastic than pandemics in the past. But for American Christians, it may clarify loyalties in a sobering and uniquely painful way.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / April 1, 2020
Pope Francis’s Respectful Critics Deserve Better Than Scorn
Francis X. Maier
Catholics have an obligation, rooted in love, to treat the Holy Father — any Holy Father — with the respect due his office. But as in any healthy family, respect does not preclude criticism on matters of substance.
Articles
National Review Online / March 21, 2020
