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, was released by Ignatius Press in early 2024.
Raised by Wolves
Francis X. Maier
What’s missing in Raised by Wolves, as in so much of modern science fiction, is precisely anything resembling or ennobling the human soul.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / October 8, 2020
It Can’t Happen Here: A Review of Live Not By Lies
Francis X. Maier
Rod Dreher’s new book seeks first to explain what’s reshaping American culture and why; and then to suggest the strategies needed today to live and witness Christian hope, despite the changing terrain.
Articles
The Catholic World Report / October 6, 2020
The Catholic Future
Francis X. Maier
Taking account of the challenges facing the Church in the third millennium, and drawing lessons from the pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, George Weigel systematically outlines the qualities needed in the next successor of Peter in his new book The Next Pope.
Articles
First Things / September 22, 2020
White Dwarf
Francis X. Maier
Whatever the fury and turmoil of our times might be, it’s who we love, what we love, and how well we love that determines our destination.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / September 2, 2020
Sympathy for the Devil
Francis X. Maier
Healthy families anchor healthy societies and are, in their essence, anti-totalitarian. In like manner, attacks on a healthy society at the macro level—the congealing of economic and political power in a minority elite, for example—inevitably cripple the family on a micro level and result in a poisoned civic life.
Articles
First Things / August 31, 2020
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