From the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A: Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. (Matt 5:10-12).

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 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.”

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...

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...

John the Baptist tells us that he has been told that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, and that we can expect the Holy Spirit. In other words, at the Father’s command we become one with the Son with the Spirit, and enter into the life of the Trinity. This changes everything for Christians...

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...

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)...

One Saturday, many years ago, a friend of mine was visiting from out of town. Looking for some prayerful encouragement—and probably a kick in the rear to get himself to confession—he confided painfully to me that he had fallen into a pattern of serious sexual sin, about which he was understandably distressed and embarrassed.

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...