Saint Elias Media

I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone quite like Michael D’Souza. We met almost a decade ago at a Redemptorist parish in downtown Bangkok, where I had just moved with my young family. Michael, even among the parish’s large Pakistani asylum-seeker community, stood out. After weekday Masses, when most attendees had departed, he would approach…

I remember the evening my childhood died. It was cold and just before Christmas; the lights were strung up on storefronts. Far across the parking lot, I could hear the ding-dings from a Salvation Army bell in front of the K-Mart. A pay phone rang, and I reached for the receiver. Thereafter, the lights all…

Just before the First Vatican Council, a critic warned what would happen if the council defined papal infallibility as its Ultramontane supporters wished. “Ultramontanism, he wrote, “is essentially Papalism,” and for its adherents the power of the Pope over the Church… neither knows nor tolerates any limits. He is to be sole and absolute master,…