Analysis and Comment
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Ancient ordination rites for women deacons sit in Vatican
Medieval liturgical manuscripts housed in the Vatican’s own library describe women being ordained to the diaconate during Mass, with the laying on of hands, invocation of the Holy Spirit and the placement of the stole by the bishop. Zagano’s research brings these forgotten rites back into focus.
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Why we are not in a Catholic revival
Surveys consistently show young adults hunger for spiritual depth and authentic community. The Catholic tradition offers both, but only if the church moves beyond repackaging familiar formulas for a new generation.
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Trump raises voice; Vatican lowers heat
One year into his pontificate, Leo XIV has moved beyond cautious silence. During Rubio’s visit, the Vatican deployed no sanctions or threats — the pope used the vocabulary of peace and compelled the American delegation to echo it. Prevost has emerged as a moral voice insisting that moral authority still commands a hearing.
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Pope Leo’s Africa visit raises the question: Is the continent really the church’s future?
Pope Leo XIV brought encouragement and challenge to Africa, pressing ruling elites on corruption while urging bishops to focus on justice over culture-war issues. But demographic and social forces that weakened Western Catholicism are already gathering on the continent, raising urgent questions about the church’s long-term trajectory.
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Why the Iran war is immoral
A hospital is not a fortress. A school is not an armory. A child eating breakfast is not collateral damage waiting to happen. The just war tradition draws these lines in indelible ink, yet the fog of war keeps producing erasers — and generals willing to use them.
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Authentic tradition, authentic voices and religious nationalism
This essay critically examines how appeals to “authentic tradition” in contemporary theological discourse function as tools in ongoing religious and political conflicts. It argues that these appeals often oversimplify complex theological realities, shaping public perception and influencing authority within the Church and society.
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How Iran broke Trump’s alliance with Catholic America
At an Easter vigil for peace, Cardinal McElroy preached that the United States entered the Iran war by choice, not necessity, and failed to exhaust negotiation. He called both its initiation and continuation morally illegitimate.
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Secret dinners and deal-making behind Pope Leo’s election
Two new books detail how private dinners, diplomatic alliances and backroom conversations among cardinals shaped the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, revealing the conclave’s hidden power dynamics in unprecedented detail.
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The boy in the basement
War does not only flatten buildings. It dismantles the invisible architecture of childhood — the assumption that the ground is solid, the belief that adults have things under control. When fear becomes normal, children stop imagining that anything better exists.
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A year on from Pope Francis
Pope Francis engineered a once-in-a-century transformation, shifting Catholicism from its European centre of gravity toward a genuinely global Church — one that listens before it teaches and walks alongside the wounded before it judges.
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