Occasionally, I’ll find #PopeFrancis trending on “X” (formerly Twitter). On one such occasion, the cause of the media spike was Francis’s statement that “those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants” are guilty of “grave sin.”1 To no one’s surprise, given our current political climate, the statement generated angry soundbite commentary. One tweet claimed that other countries had “emptied their jails and mental institutions and sent them on the way to [American flag emoji].” “Illegal immigrants,” complained another user, “did not knock on the door[;] they broke the window and snuck through the backdoor.” Two weeks later, another migrant story spewed out of the ugly underbelly of social media: Haitian immigrants, it was claimed, were eating cats, dogs, and geese in Ohio.

As I write this note, two anticipated events in the Catholic world have just occurred: the opening of the 2023 Synod on Synodality in Rome and the publication of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum, his follow-up to Laudato Si’. The two share a theme that Francis sees as fundamental to the human creature and

“Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.” Such was the entreaty that, according to popular lore, the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted to Martin Luther King Jr. on August 28, 1963.1 The civil rights leader was two-thirds through the speech he was delivering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King had spoken about his dream in other contexts but had not included the idea in his prepared texts for this speech. We can be grateful then that King, responding to Jackson or some other grace-touched inspiration, went off script and spoke words that, though often scorned at the time, have ever since resounded deep in the American soul:
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

In the discussions that preceded my becoming editor of this journal, I raised the issue of journal “fit”: What are the characteristics that should define articles published in the journal? There was general consensus that even if an article were broadly theological and exhibited top-rate scholarship, it might still not be a good fit for

To be a Jesuit “is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus.” So states Degree 2 of the Thirty-Second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus. Like all core insights of Ignatian spirituality, the statement is equally applicable to the Christian life in general: the Christian is a

As this issue goes to press, the world watches in heart-wrenching dismay the violence being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine, staggering violations of human dignity reported in disturbing textual detail and hauntingly graphic images. Over fifty years after Paul VI’s 1965 exhortation to the United Nations, “No more war, war never again,” Pope Francis

In May 2021, the Vatican announced that the Synod of Bishops (“For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission”), previously scheduled for 2022, would be postponed until October 2023. The delay is partly due to COVID-19, but, as Cardinal Mario Grech, the general secretary for the Synod of Bishops, stated, it also allows the synod

I remember being deeply moved when I first read Karl Rahner’s On Prayer, based on a series of meditations he had given in Munich after World War II. Moved and surprised: I had not associated Rahner’s writings with such power to affect the heart. Rational, persuasive, brilliant, insightful, yes, but not spiritually moving. I shouldn’t have

“One professor from MIT reports a new technology, a ‘book’ made of electronic paper which needs only to be plugged in and charged up with a text downloaded.” So wrote Michael Fahey, SJ, the late editor in chief of Theological Studies, in his December 1997 column. Those electronic pages have long ceased to be a wondrous