Stephen P. White

If liturgy was once the universal common denominator for Catholics the world over, it no longer is. A concerted effort to strengthen a shared ecclesial life – and especially shared liturgical life – across linguistic barriers ought to be a pastoral priority.

Any attempt to promote understanding or renew devotion to the Eucharist will be hampered so long as bishops imagine that ecclesial communion is damaged less by grave sin than it is by bishops who proclaim truths the world doesn’t want to hear.

The geopolitical context surrounding the 1981 attempt on John Paul II’s life is just one layer of the story. Another layer of the story, more familiar to pious Catholics for obvious reasons, has to do with the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima.

Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus annus connects the theological and philosophical foundations of Catholic social teaching to the ideological challenges of our own century.

A good shepherd does not abandon his sheep; he lays down his life for them. Bishops who are willing to give up everything – who are not afraid to go and die for their people – are the bishops the Church needs.

Catholics in the United States too often demonstrate a complacency of mind more characteristic of an establishment church than a distinctive minority.

As welcome as the clarity of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s statement on same-sex unions may be, that clarity does not absolve any of us from the work of loving our enemies, let alone our brothers and sisters in Christ.

The garden is more than an allegory for harmony with our Creator and his creation. Gardening is, or can be, a moral enterprise.

The abuse crisis is, in some important ways, a unique challenge for the Catholic Church. In some ways, though, its remedy is the same as the remedy for all the challenges the Church faces: strive for holiness, cling to the Church, preach the Good News in word and deed.

One could say that Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees were a form of true accompaniment. They are a model for “dialogue” with a certain kind of interlocutor: for how a Good Shepherd accompanies the powerful, the obstinate, and the self-righteous.

For better or worse, Joe Biden’s words and actions as president will shape how the Catholic faith is perceived and understood.

If Protestantism no longer provides the ballast for this republic, and if Catholicism is not – at least, not presently – up to the task, then one of two options remains. Either our politics will continue to careen towards disaster or something else will, if it has not already, fill the void.