When St. Paul talked about the resurrection of the dead with the philosophers at Athens, many laughed and mocked him . The Gospel, he would later write, is “foolishness” to the wise of this world. Yet this week’s First Reading tells us that it is foolish to think that the souls of the just are dead. Instead, theirs is a “hope full of immortality. ”By His Resurrection, Jesus frees the human race from the fear of death, from the terrible fear of the unknown...

In the letter to the Hebrews, the author makes a statement of faith that presumes two things about the exercise and practice of a faith in God. One, an active faith proposes a belief in God the Father, and that our hope rests on God, and two, an active faith exercises docility to the will of God, even when we may wonder if He is present during a time of great need...

“It could be said that present-day man does not think things through to the end.”1 Karol Cardinal Wojtyla delivered that fine bit of understatement in 1976, at the outset of the spiritual conferences he gave to the Roman Curia that Lent. At the time, his primary concern seems to have been the tendency of secular men and women to falter in the search for truth, for, as Archbishop of Krakow, he was daily confronted...

For those who have not yet had the pleasure, Villanova University stretches idyllically across Philadelphia’s Main Line, a mere pebble toss from the placid ponds and ivied arches of Bryn Mawr College. Under the stewardship of Peter Donohue, O.S.A, the Augustinian institution is expanding that Ruskinesque landscape, as Villanova looks more and more like Catholic Oxford every day. At the Western edge of its cloistering...

It may not be an official agenda item. But a top priority for the U.S. bishops at their fall meeting next week in Baltimore may well be to get off on the right foot with Pope Leo XIV. Elected in May, Leo’s papacy comes after a complicated 12-year relationship between his predecessor, Pope Francis, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The two parties were widely viewed to be out of sync, with the USCCB facing criticism for downplaying papal priorities and Francis regularly bypassing conference leadership for key appointments.

It has been said, purportedly by G.K. Chesterton, that when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing but in anything. Even worse is that the things which people believe are not merely godless but deadly and demonic. Take, for instance, the modern anti-Christian creeds that led to the French and Russian Revolutions and to the rise of the Nazis...

The Vatican City State Tribunal has found Nicola Giampaolo guilty of slander and sentenced him to three years and six months in prison. In a press release from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, dated 30 October, it was announced that the tribunal had found Giampaolo, a historian from Italy’s Puglia region and a journalist by training...

Why commemorate a church dedication that happened in fourth-century Rome? First, because St. John Lateran is no ordinary church; it’s the cathedral church of the Pope and still known as “the mother of all the world’s churches.” But more than that, because God has from all time intended the church building to be a symbol of His Church and our bodies. This is what the readings for today’s feast invite us to consider...

In this episode Trent Horn examines how Protestant arguments against Catholicism can backfire...

The present Note responds to numerous requests and proposals that have reached the Holy See in recent decades, and particularly this Dicastery, regarding questions pertaining to Marian devotion and certain Marian titles. These are questions that have concerned recent Popes and have been repeatedly addressed in the last thirty years in various areas of study within the Dicastery, such as Congresses and Ordinary Assemblies...