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  You may have heard it said—even in a sermon, which should be free of such speculation—that Christians chose December 25 to celebrate Jesus’ birth because that was the day the Romans held a festival celebrating the sun god. The idea, oft proclaimed, is that Christianity... Read More →

  Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” It’s an aggressive instruction. The word for “put,” as elsewhere in this passage, can mean throwing, thrusting, plunging—the... Read More →

  Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous. The Prince of Life, who died, reigns immortal. Alleluia! (Victimae Paschali Laudes) As I grow older, I find myself increasingly interested in obituaries (I wonder why). And there, one often reads that the deceas... Read More →

In 1950, an Irish Jesuit priest named Father Edmond Kent was visiting Manhattan for the day. He was hoping to meet Dorothy Day, because he had read about her remarkable conversion from Marxism to Christianity, and was equally impressed by her Catholic Worker Movement and its... Read More →

Scientifically known as ectogenesis, the possibility of gestating human life outside the uterus could be a Moment of Truth for abortion activists. Societal implications indeed abound, but the politically correct denizens of our modern culture have wasted no time in staking out... Read More →

I. Twinning and Abortion I consider abortion wrong because it is, I judge, the taking of a human life. Like any other taking of a human life, it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong always, but there should be a strong presumption against it.1 Why does it seem to me that abortion is the... Read More →

  “Jesus . . . sent two of his disciples and said to them: ‘Go into the village opposite you, and immediately upon entering it, you will find a colt tethered on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone should say to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’... Read More →

  When he was in high school, my eldest son was assigned Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He was to compare it with a sermon of his own choosing—one his deeply Calvinist teacher might expect him to find wanting in light of the... Read More →

  It was an overcast afternoon ten years ago when all hell broke loose. A massive earthquake hit off the Pacific coast of Japan, rocking buildings from the Sendai area—where it was the strongest—all the way down to Tokyo and farther south. The quake-wracked ground broke open... Read More →

[Timothy Cardinal Dolan is the Archbishop of New York. This column appeared on January 13 on the website of Catholic New York (www.cny.org) and is reprinted with the Cardinal’s permission.]   “Why are you Catholics so hung up about abortion?” this rather well-known political... Read More →