This week’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, in cases involving state laws that ban boys from girls’ sports, may prove to be a decisive turning point in the surreal political struggle over gender ideology. The battle is not won, but the momentum has shifted. Credit Justice Samuel Alito with the question that fully exposed the absurdity of the argument before the court...

Motherhood is an amazing gift that only women have. Yet so many of our fellow citizens have been programmed to view it instead as a burden, an obstacle to career advancement, or even a disease to be avoided at all costs through sterilization, contraception, and abortion...

In a 1974 address to a group of lay Catholics, Pope Paul VI noted that "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses" — an acute observation he later reiterated in his spiritual testament, the 1975 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (Announcing the Gospel)...

I don’t know how it came to happen that I, of all people, ended up with a daughter as biddable and sweet natured as I did. It’s not genetic, that’s for sure. She’s universally doted upon, to be sure, especially since we waited more than a decade — I won’t say always patiently, though usually prayerfully — for her arrival. Being a beloved and indulged only child has to...

More Christians were killed in Nigeria last year than anywhere else in the world combined, a new report has found, placing the country at the center of a growing global persecution crisis. Of the 4,849 Christians killed for their faith worldwide, 3,490 were in Nigeria, according to Open Doors’ World Watch List 2026...

When referring to a soft drink, do you say pop, soda, or Coke? Your stance on the centuries-long debate reveals more about your roots than your flavor preference. In some states, ordering a "Coke" could get you a Dr Pepper. And if you grew up saying "soda," hearing someone ask for a "pop" might make you do a double-take.

A fine recent article on the late Renaissance painter Caravaggio* reminded me that artistic brilliance may not always be matched by moral achievement. This is a problem that plagues everyone in every walk in life, but it is particularly annoying when the moral reputation of an artist stands between his work and our ability to appreciate it...

In robotics, as in so many things, small is beautiful. The trouble is that making them really small is very nearly impossible. “Building robots that operate independently at sizes below one millimeter is incredibly difficult,” says roboticist Marc Miskin at the University of Pennsylvania. “The field has essentially been stuck on this problem for 40 years.”

For generations, the archbishop of New York has held a singular place in the life of the Catholic Church in the United States — standing at the crossroads of culture, conscience and public witness. Few shepherds embodied that national role more clearly than Cardinal John O’Connor, who died in May 2000 after nearly 16 years as archbishop of New York...

Coming a few days after Christmas 2025, the protests erupting in Iran caught much of the Western world by surprise. Of course, Iran has had major protests before (2009-2010, 2011, 2019-2020, 2022-2023), which have often been brutally suppressed by the Islamic Republic’s security forces. This time, however, the protests appear to have been even larger...