Pope Francis

Shrine to Migrants in St. Peter's Square

Last month, in honor of  the Vatican’s World Day for Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis unveiled a three-ton shrine to migrants in St. Peter’s Square. Lumpen and inert, the addition is no surprise. Less and less is art conceived or promoted in terms of aesthetic value. It has become a form of advocacy journalism. Even in the Vatican, a repository of centuries of cultured achievement, political significance is the primary measure of artistic significance. St. Peter’s spanking-new monument squats in proximity to the luminous twin fountains by Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Continue Reading
The Vatican: Integral Ecology and Liberation Theology

The extraordinary Synod of Bishops for the Pan Amazon region, coming to the Vatican in October, is a very big deal. It would be a mistake for people to dismiss it as inside baseball among Catholics. Far-reaching issues of broad societal concern are at work here under cover of ecological ideals and social justice rhetoric delivered in a Christian idiom. Under cover of deep ecology, liberation theology has come in out of the cold. And it is gunning to even the score between the industrial West and the Third World. Continue Reading
Francis & Mirages of Fraternity, part 1

Pope Francis’ Christmas message, clotted with the word fraternity, was such a brew of pernicious banality that it is hard to know where to start. From the perspective of our 24-hour news cycle, a Moloch that feeds on contrived obsolescence, the papal dispatch asks to be addressed before the end of Christmastide. However, what matters is not one passing item in the news but its substratum, something steady and abiding. In this case, that bedrock something is hostile to the very civilization—however flawed—which has sustained the Church that gave it life and breath. Continue Reading
Priesthood: From Uncle Fultie to Uncle Ted

This is no easy time for the priesthood. The culture that produced and celebrated Bing Crosby’s portrayal of Fr. Charles O’Malley in Going My Way (1944) and, two years later, The Bells of St. Mary is extinct. Decent, congenial “Fr. Chuck” was a blithe symbol of goodness, honor, and virtue that an entire nation could trust and embrace. Not any more. On both sides of the screen, the cultural landscape has changed. In the culture at large, and the eyes of many Catholics themselves, the priesthood has become a tainted profession. Continue Reading