Father Christian Troll, a German Jesuit, is one of the Catholic Church’s leading students of Islam and a key figure in the Catholic-Islamic dialogue launched by Pope Benedict XVI’s September 2006 Regensburg Lecture. Speaking recently at Cambridge University, Father Troll…

I can’t remember precisely when I fell in love with history, but it was surely in the first innings of my reading life.

Granted, this was easier in the days when history was written and taught as, well, history — meaning…

There will be much to ponder, once this interminable electoral cycle comes to an end. Why has so much of the campaign seemed like a prolonged episode of “American Idol,” with candidates trying to sell their personal “narratives” rather than…

Justice John Paul Stevens is 88, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. Justice Anthony Kennedy is 72. Justice Stephen Breyer is 70. Justice David Souter is 68. Given those demographics, the next president of the United States will likely nominate…

No matter who is elected president, American forces will remain in Iraq for a considerable period of time. The serious points at issue have to do with troop numbers, deployments, missions, and the question of a permanent American base in…

Thirty-five years after Roe v. Wade struck down the abortion law of all 50 states, the life issues remain the most sharply contested in American public life. They are also signature issues of Catholic concern, not for any “sectarian” reason…

Back in the day, before the parish repertoire was expanded to accommodate the hymn sandwich (the “opening hymn” and “closing hymn”), the “offertory hymn,” and the almost-never-sung-by-parishioners “Communion hymn,” Catholics in the U.S. didn’t know a lot of hymns. Everyone…

Full disclosure, up front: Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver is an old friend; the Archdiocese of Denver syndicates this column to Catholic papers throughout the country; I played a (very) minor role in introducing Archbishop Chaput to my friends at…

It’s hard to imagine a less auspicious time for the reception of a papal encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning than the summer of 1968. Now, 40 years after it was issued, Pope Paul VI’s letter, Humanae…

In 1850, Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman wrote his fellow-Englishmen from Rome, announcing that Pius IX had restored the diocesan hierarchy in England and that he, Wiseman, would be cardinal archbishop of Westminster. “From Out the Flaminian Gate,” a pastoral letter longer…