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Happy Friday friends, And an especially happy Platinum Jubilee weekend to those readers lucky enough to be celebrating it.  For 70 years, Elizabeth II has reigned as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, Solomon Islands, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tuvalu.  Or as Americans insist on calling them, “England.” I acquired my British (not “English”) citizenship when I was 17 and, being legally an adult, I had the unusual experience of swearing to bear true and faithful allegiance to Her Maj. Saving some serious reservations about her feckless, witless, and endlessly otiose offspring, this is something I have,...

In 1943, Bl. Pius XII released the encyclical Mystici Corporis, in which he articulated membership in the Catholic Church this way: Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true Faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed (22). This directly contradicts a literal interpretation of “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” If you can separate yourself from unity or if legitimate authorities can exclude you for grave faults so that you no longer qualify as a “member” of the Church, then you can obviously cease to be Catholic. You would still carry the indelible marks on your soul of baptism and confirmation (CCC 12...

In 1826 Captain Jules Dumont d’Urville, a French scientist and naval officer, was caught in a turbulent storm while crossing the Indian Ocean. He watched as a wall of water rose some 100 feet above his ship, the Astrolabe. It was one of several waves more than 80 feet tall that he recorded during the wild storm. One of his crew was lost to the sea. Yet after Dumont d’Urville made it back to land, his story, backed by three witnesses, seemed so outlandish that it was dismissed as fantasy. Scientists at the time believed waves could only reach about 30 feet tall, so the handful of 19th century reports of massive waves rising in the open ocean were largely written off as maritime myths. Only later would scientists realize that the accounts were rare because many mariners who experienced these...

With a gracious assist from former Kansas governor Sam Brownback, I had the privilege of a personal tour of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum in Abilene this past March. And I couldn’t have had a better guide: Mary Jean Eisenhower, the 34th president’s charming granddaughter, with whom I shared lunch in a roadside restaurant evidently much favored by the locals — the parking lot was jam-packed before noon. After a getting-to-know-you hour over heartland victuals, Mary Jean and I were off to the museum and the memorial chapel where Ike, Mamie Eisenhower, and their son Icky, who died of scarlet fever before his fourth birthday, are buried; the boy’s death, his father later wrote in At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, was “the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life.” The m...

The grave significance of receiving of Holy Communion should not be underestimated. Last week, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone announced that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may not be admitted to Holy Communion in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Not a few of you have been asking me about it. I want to talk about what the announcement actually means, so we can discuss this in a thoughtful way. I’m mostly addressing those of you who are Catholic and are “personally opposed” to abortion, but might say you wouldn’t want to impose your beliefs on others — or those of you who identify as faithful Catholics but who are in support of abortion rights. I want to start by saying that what Archbishop Cordileone did is as much about Holy Communion as it is about abortion. What does it mean to rece...