Americans are talking about confidential communications this week, after cabinet secretaries, the vice president, and other senior Trump administration officials came under fire for including a journalist in a group chat that debated, planned, and provided updates on a March 15 bombing run against Houthi targets in Yemen.

We tend to measure the morality of our behavior against the effects of our actions. The criteria seem reasonable, but some evil actions (such as dishonest stock trading) pay rich rewards. Among the most neglected concepts in Catholic moral theology are intrinsically evil acts that offend God. An “intrinsically evil act” is evil in itself...

What if your greatest weakness could become your greatest witness? In this powerful, funny, and deeply moving conversation, we sit down with Fr. Augustine Wetta — a Benedictine monk, author, and high school chaplain — who’s living with early onset Parkinson’s. Doctors told him he’d be “non-functional” by now ... but he’s still preaching, writing, and cracking jokes.

In a particularly striking conversation between Jesus and his disciples, the disciples ask Jesus why he uses parables (stories) to explain what he is trying to convey to the followers around him. The disciples were enamored with Jesus’ methods probably because they were accustomed to the methods of the Scribes and Pharisees. Nevertheless, Jesus explains to the disciples that the premise behind the use of parables is to help them understand the keys to the kingdom...

In the movie The Man with Two Brains, Steve Martin plays a widower who is considering getting remarried. His beautiful but greedy girlfriend Dolores artfully conceals her cruelty. One day, Martin stands before a portrait of his dead wife, Rebecca, and begs, “Rebecca, if there is anything wrong with my feelings for Dolores, just give me a sign.” Immediately, lights blink, winds whip, and an earthquake erupts...

Nature, and I mean the wonderful world bursting into bloom and the human nature throbbing within us, is always on our side. It never stops calling us to richer, fuller life. We can listen to our flesh. It has something to say. Yes, we are careful to discipline it, especially in Lent, lest its inclinations run amok and lead us astray. But Aslan is not a tame lion. Nor should we live in the cage in which our hyper-technologized, anti-natural, navel-gazing, comfort-seeking culture tends to trap us.

“Woke,” shorthand for what was once known as “political correctness,” helped fuel a grievance-based progressive politics that did immense damage to the American body politic, while filling young minds with a surfeit of historical nonsense. The New York Times 1619 Project, which falsified the story of the United States by reading our entire national history through the lens of America’s original sin, slavery, was wokery’s Platonic form. It poisoned school curricula and underwrote the race-baiting politics that followed the murder of George Floyd...

There is a large and growing distrust with institutions in the US. In fact, it has reached record lows according to Gallup. Trust in “the church or organized religion” is at 31%. Read another way, 7 out of 10 Americans distrust organized religion, including the Catholic Church. But, other institutions lack the trust of the masses as well. Congress, news organizations, big businesses, the criminal justice system, banks, the Supreme Court, and public schools have even lower levels of trust than religion does...

The concept comes from the Old Testament, marking the completion of seven cycles of sabbath years, a time of rest given to the land every seven years. In the fiftieth year, not just the land but all of society would experience liberation and rest, marking a renewal of the freedom God gave his people in bringing them out of the slavery of Egypt. John Bergsma explains the importance of the biblical Jubilee in his book...

Picture a medieval city in Europe, with the cathedral at its center, the people gathered outside on the piazza. Or think of ancient Rome, where leaders gathered at the Forum to discuss public affairs or offer sacrifices to their gods. In early New England villages, the church on the town green also served as the meetinghouse. In these communities, political debates were never far removed from religious principles.