Pope Francis & Cardinal Pelll — Ten Things that Caught My Eye Today (March 13, 2019)

I’ll be at the Sheen Center in Manhattan tonight talking with Sohrab Ahmari about his book on faith, From Fire by Water. Details here — join us if you’re in town and able.

Today is the sixth anniversary of Pope Francis’s election as pope. I was in St. Peter’s Square that night. I remain most struck by how he asked for prayers. He would repeat that again and again. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of what we’re seeing in the Church in the world would look different if believers took prayer more seriously — even more seriously than having an opinion on every matter under the sun. Before every thought, word, and action. And in gratitude.

What’s wrong with the world? Maybe really communicating the desire for true faith — total trust in God alone — may be a start. It would start to put to death our unbelief and hypocrisies, putting us on the road to true conversion to Beatitudinal living of the sort that the world needs.

1. Thomas Hibbs, a longtime writer for National Review and this website, is the new president of the University of Dallas.

2. George Weigel on the Vatican and Australia’s Cardinal Pell

3. John Allen: Will Pell be abuse crisis’s Eichmann, Count of Monte Cristo or Rosenbergs?

4. Arthur Brooks and the Dalai Lama

5. A conversation about the Bladensburg cross case before the Supreme Court

6. Bethany Mandel’s love letter to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

7. I read this story about a mother leaving her child at the airport and the plane turning around and wondered in a domestic air situation if the plane actually would.