A quarter of a century of friendship with Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, who died 10 years ago this month, left me with many happy memories. Two of them involve his investiture as a cardinal in February 2001 and bring his accomplishment as a theologian into focus. On the evening of February 23, Cardinal Dulles celebrated

On the same day that law enforcement raided the chancery of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, the attorney general of New Mexico executed a search warrant on the chancery of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Officials were looking for information on two priests the archdiocese had named in a list they released of clergy who had

The day after the raid on Sante Fe, the rector of Holy Apostles College and Seminary in the Archdiocese of Hartford came forward to discuss the shocking conclusions of a 2012 investigation. The final report spoke of a gay subculture at the seminary, which it situated “in the context of a much wider homosexual network

Catholics in Spain have voiced alarm at the rapid decline of monastic life in the country, despite reassurances from Church leaders. “We are haemorrhaging fast – religious congregations are being forced to shut their doors definitively due to scarce vocations and advancing ages,” says a statement from Christian Networks, a grouping of more than 200

Political interference is suspected after hundreds of Christians, including a Catholic archbishop, were denied their right to vote in Indian state elections despite apparently having all the relevant papers. Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal was among those turned away from polling booths in the central state of Madhya Pradesh because their names were not on

I have always fancied myself as a natural diplomat who might have missed my true calling in life. Until, that is, I came head to head with my four-year-old niece, who was facing a sartorial crisis on Saturday afternoon. I could hear her sobbing from her bedroom because her dress was “tooo [gulp] smaaaalll”, and

Barring the unforeseen, John Henry Newman will be declared a saint in 2019. Church authorities have determined that a woman in Chicago who had a life-threatening pregnancy and a deacon in Boston who had a debilitating spinal condition were each miraculously healed after praying to Newman, thus clearing the way for his canonisation. In time,

What were Shakespeare’s greatest play and Leonardo’s greatest painting? The very questioning is contentious and sparks verbal wars, most violently among pedants. We then tread fields of landmines when looking for Newman’s greatest achievement, exclusive of the fundamental and definitive achievement of heroic sanctity. But just as Alexander Pope cautioned that fools rush in where