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. 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.
His bylined work has appeared in First Things, National Review, The American Spectator, Crisis, This World, America, Commonweal, the New York Times Sunday magazine, Christian Science Monitor, and other national and foreign outlets.
Our Real Pandemic
Francis X. Maier
Recovering a humility about our own silent apostasies, the need for our own deeper conversion, and clarity about the challenges for Catholic life in our country that lie ahead – these things begin the renewal of our Church and our nation.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / May 5, 2021
The One Necessary Thing
Francis X. Maier
The vocation of Catholics, here in the real world, is always the same: Make disciples of all nations, including our own; and be leaven in society, especially our own. If we pursue that with all our hearts, we do the one necessary thing.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / April 16, 2021
True Economic Headway Ennobles the Human Spirit
Francis X. Maier
Innovation is part of the special American genius. But real progress is never merely material; unless it also ennobles the human spirit, it isn’t “progress” at all.
Articles
Legatus / April 1, 2021
Things Worth Dying For
Francis X. Maier
The latest book by retired Archbishop Charles Chaput offers his most memorable and moving work.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / March 3, 2021
Somebody Needs to Be Dad
Francis X. Maier
The extraordinary fact of Catholic life in the United States is not the few bishops who humiliate us so bitterly, but the many who do the job so well
Articles
First Things / February 22, 2021
Hope and Her Daughters
Francis X. Maier
Hope feeds and grows on the experience of love, the will to persist in that love, and the letting go of anger, no matter how vicious or lunatic the times.
Articles
First Things - March 2021 issue / February 11, 2021
Some Thoughts on Words and Their Meanings
Francis X. Maier
When we really believe what we claim to believe, we conform our hearts, our minds, our choices, and our actions – both in private and in public – to the convictions we claim to hold. Otherwise, we’re liars.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / February 4, 2021
Ordinary Time
Francis X. Maier
In the sacred space of our conscience and our personal choices, none of us is powerless, and no life, no matter how obscure or limited, is inconsequential. How we live our lives matters.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / January 20, 2021
Memory and Gratitude
Francis X. Maier
Until we suffer for what we believe, or have our hearts changed by the witness of others who suffer, our faith is untested and aspirational; a matter of good intentions.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / December 9, 2020
People of the Lie
Francis X. Maier
Donald Trump may have teased and fed the nation’s spirit of conflict, but he didn’t create it. And Trump’s exit won’t heal any of our deepest fractures.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / November 14, 2020
The New Colonialism
Francis X. Maier
What may be coming our way is an odd kind of “new colonialism,” with flyover country—that Dark Continent formerly known as places like Kansas, Alabama, and Tennessee—reduced in effective power to mission territory for our enlightened coastal elites.
Articles
First Things / November 5, 2020
