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When God commanded us to keep the seventh day holy and free from work, He expressed His knowledge of our nature, which we in the modern world rarely recognize. We are meant to rest, and we’re meant to enjoy our rest. If our pursuit of work and intensity is compromised because of our failure to rest, we are negating our own good and the good God desires of us. For better or worse, I have been blessed with an abundance of energy and, more often than not, enthusiasm for the things I love. I love what I love, and I often ignore that which I don’t. But I really (yes, really) love what I love. I caution “for better or worse,” though, because such energy can be frankly off-putting to those who do not share such enthusiasms. I have been criticized more than once in my life for “being over the top”...

ROME – A pope is a universal figure who usually tries to stay above the fray of national politics, but that’s always complicated in his own backyard by the fact he’s also the Primate of Italy and the Bishop of Rome, so he faces constant pressure to be drawn into whatever’s bubbling here. Right now,  the best example is a new draft Italian law against “homotransphobia,” which supporters style as a needed measure to protect a vulnerable minority, while critics, including Italy’s Catholic bishops, see as a possible infringement of free speech and religious freedom. Though there have been several forms of the proposal, a newly unified text adopted this week would extend existing hate speech provisions in Italian law on ethnic, racial and religious grounds to four new categories: “sex, gen...

Imagine this: An airline loses your checked bag. After an extensive search, customer support comes up empty-handed. They compensate you and life goes on. But life goes on for your suitcase, too. Written off as “unclaimed,” it sits in a musty collection depot for 3 months. Eventually, the airline sells it — along with hundreds of other lost suitcases and cargo shipments — to a private company, sight unseen. The new owner cracks the lock, sifts through your former possessions, and marks them for sale. A few days later, a retired mechanic named Charlie buys your grandfather’s watch for $150. A 19-year-old line cook acquires your Beats headphones. And a nurse from Florida becomes the proud new owner of the scarf your mom knitted you for Christmas.  This is the bizarre secondary market for...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — WAR, what is it good for? For Edwin Starr, the answer was “absolutely nothin’” — although “somethin’” might be a better answer, since he had a No. 1 hit with the tune in 1970. But for Dominican Father Humbert Kilanowski, he’s got a different answer, because he’s asking a different question. Kilanowski, a mathematics professor at Providence College in Rhode Island, has been a baseball stats guy since his freshman year in high school, when he was a student manager of his school’s baseball team. “I played up to eighth grade, but I wasn’t any good,” he confessed. Back then, he remembered, the new big-deal stats were WHIP and OPS. For the uninitiated, WHIP stands for walks plus hits per inning pitched, a measure of a pitcher’s ability to keep runners off base. OPS stands for ...

The past four papal elections haven’t been kind to prognosticators. The 1978 conclaves—which elected Albino Luciani as John Paul I, then Karol Wojtyła as John Paul II—confirmed the adage that “he who enters the conclave a pope leaves it a cardinal.” In August 1978, the putatively leading candidates didn’t get out of the starting blocks. John Paul I died in September after a 33-day pontificate, and two cardinals favored by the Great Mentioner deadlocked in the October conclave, opening the door to Wojtyła’s stunning election….