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.
Voodoo and Its Enchantments
Francis X. Maier
When preached by today’s apostles of urgent change, and then chanted endlessly in everything from fashion blogs to mainstream news reporting to athletic shoe commercials, magic words like “equity” and “inclusion” infect our language with a kind of hypnotic voodoo.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / September 30, 2021
All You Need To Know About Sex
Francis X. Maier
Today’s sharp decline in sexual activity among the young has everything to do with the isolating cocoon of pornography and the collapse of any higher meaning in sexual relationships. Sex without love—real love, the kind that comes with obligations and unexpected burdens, but also unexpected joys—kills the taste for both.
Articles
First Things / September 27, 2021
Something To Look Forward To
Francis X. Maier
One of the disagreeable facts about members of every elite modern leadership class—take the Boston to Washington corridor, for example—is that they tend to nibble, metaphorically, on the people they lead.
Articles
Public Discourse / September 23, 2021
Make America Great Again, Again, 2024
Francis X. Maier
In the past, our private and public lives played out within the framework of a broad, biblically inspired set of beliefs and moral behaviors. Politics is now, in effect, our religion—but without the irritating, aerodynamic drag of a “God” to act as a brake on our hatreds.
Articles
First Things / August 31, 2021
Women of Character, Then and Now
Francis X. Maier
An unpleasant fact of book publishing today is that Big Authors can suck the oxygen out of a market. Two smaller but important books by equally gifted but lesser-known names deserve generous praise and a wide popular audience.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / August 25, 2021
A Work of Intricate Threads
Francis X. Maier
Andrée Emery was a woman of extraordinary intellect and zeal, who quietly counted some of the Catholic greats of the last century as friends, and spent a lifetime mending, connecting, and stitching together hearts searching for God.
Articles
First Things / August 24, 2021
Looking Back to Think Forward
Francis X. Maier
In every age, it’s the converted mind and heart that God uses to make all things new, whatever the obstacles.
Articles
First Things / August 4, 2021
A New Reformation
Francis X. Maier
We need to remember — and remembering is a sacred task — that there will be no real novus ordo seclorum, no genuinely “new order of the ages,” without the kingship of Jesus Christ.
Articles
The Catholic World Report / July 24, 2021
Eat the Disabled? Follow the Science
Francis X. Maier
History, and science fiction, show how attempts to “follow the science” often lead to dark and cruel places.
Articles
The Catholic Thing / July 24, 2021
What Happens in Germany, Revisited
Francis X. Maier
To what degree have the current Holy Father’s good intentions, and the ambiguity embedded in his meaning of “synodality,” fed the turmoil his papacy now faces in Germany?
Articles
First Things / May 26, 2021
A Memory of Locustland
Francis X. Maier
EPPC Senior Fellow Francis X. Maier reflects on Nathaniel West, the mercy of God, and the writing of “one of the most idiotic and embarrassing movies ever made.”
Articles
First Things / May 10, 2021
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