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Twenty years ago this month, I found myself seriously double-booked, so to speak.

By peremptorily ordering the American bishops not to vote on local remedies for today’s Catholic crisis of abusive clergy and malfeasant bishops, the Vatican dramatically raised the stakes for the February 2019 meeting that Pope Francis has called to discuss the crisis in a global perspective. How the Americans taking decisive action last month would have impeded Roman deliberations in February – the strange explanation offered by the Vatican for its edict – will remain an open question. Now, the most urgent matter is to define correctly the issues that global gathering will address. As there are disturbing signs that Those Who Just Don’t Get It are still not getting it, I’d like to flag some pitfalls the February meeting should avoid.

Perspective is at least as important when reading the signs of the times as it is in landscape painting. And so, in this autumn of our Catholic discontent, I was particularly grateful to hear from an old friend, Nina-Sophie Heereman, who offered some needed perspective on the Catholic circumstance in the United States.

The Sunday Mass Scripture during this summer of horrors have often been eerily appropriate, beginning with Jeremiah’s polemic against malfeasant shepherds who mislead the Lord’s flock (July 25) and continuing through the story of many disciples’ defection after the “hard words” of the bread of life discourse (Aug. 26). And it’s entirely understandable that more than a few Catholics have choked on the word “holy” these past few months, when asked to affirm it of the church during the Creed and the Offertory. But while understandable, that still bespeaks a misunderstanding. The reason why is given immediately after the defection story in John 6: 60-66, when the Lord asks the Twelve if they, too, are going to bail on him and Peter answers, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

When the great Tom Wolfe died on May 14 – he of the white suits, the spats, and the prose style as exuberant as his wardrobe – I, like millions of others, remembered the many moments of pleasure I had gotten from his work.

The vacation season is an opportunity to escape TwitterWorld and do some serious reading. These books will help make your summer enjoyable, instructive, or both.

The bizarre comment and the weird gesture have not, until recently, been associated with high-ranking churchmen. Both, alas, were on vivid display last month when Cardinals Reinhard Marx and Gianfranco Ravasi had more than a few of us scratching our heads in wonderment.

A chapter in a remarkable American and Catholic life will close on June 6, when Abbot Thomas Frerking, OSB, concludes more than two decades of service as leader of the monastic community at St. Louis Abbey. His story deserves to be better known.

In a recent interview, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state of the Holy See, suggested that certain critics of a deal between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China were misconstruing the Holy See’s motivations:

With the exception of the two consistories held by Pope John XXIII in 1958 and 1959, every creation of new cardinals since Pope Pius XII has decreased the percentage of Italian members of the College of Cardinals while internationalizing it. (John XXIII’s first consistory actually increased the Italian membership to 40 percent of an expanded college.) That pattern of internationalization and, if you will, de-Italianization has continued with Pope Francis and the college now includes members from 15 countries (such as Tonga, Laos, and Papua New Guinea) that have never given the church a cardinal before.

The defense of the indefensible often leads to a kind of derangement in otherwise rational people. That was the case with the defenders of slavery and legalized racial segregation; it has become the case with abortion.

The headline on March 3rd story at the Crux website was certainly arresting – “Cardinal on charges of rigged synods: ‘There was no maneuvering!’” The cardinal in question was Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, and not only were his voluble comments striking, they were also a bit disconcerting. Did I simply imagine the uproar on the floor of the synod on Oct. 16, 2014, as bishop after bishop protested an interim report generated by Baldisseri and his colleague, Archbishop Bruno Forte, that did not reflect the discussions of the previous two weeks?

About five years ago, a friend took her son with her when she went to a beauty shop to get her hair cut. The hairdresser was snipping away and the boy was engrossed in reading on his Kindle when another mother came into the shop with her daughter in tow.

In his June 1908 apostolic constitution, “Sapienti Consilio,” Pope Pius X decreed that, as of Nov. 3 that year, the Catholic Church in the United States would no longer be supervised by the Vatican’s missionary agency, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide).

The Scriptures of Lent in the church’s daily liturgy invite two related reflections. The weeks immediately preceding Easter call us to walk to Jerusalem in imitation of Christ, so that, at Easter, we, too might be blessed with baptismal water and sent into the world on mission. The preceding weeks, those immediately following Ash Wednesday, propose a serious examination of conscience: What is there in me that’s broken? What’s impeding my being the missionary disciple I was baptized to be?

Ever since Thomas Kuhn popularized it with his 1962 book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” the notion of a “paradigm shift” has led to fascinating arguments about whether this or that break with previous scientific understanding counted as one.

In the history of U.S. Catholic higher education since World War II, three seminal moments stand out: Msgr. John Tracy Ellis’ 1955 article, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life;” the 1967 Land o’ Lakes statement, “The Idea of a Catholic University;” and the day Don J. Briel began the Catholic Studies Program – and the Catholic studies movement – at the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities.

It’s been a good year for publishing – at least in the sense of a lot of good books getting published – so here are some for the readers on your Christmas gift list (in addition, of course, to “Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II” [Basic Books], by your scribe):

Happy (real) new year: the beginning of a new year of grace, which began December 3 with the First Sunday of Advent.

Four centuries after his death, Shakespeare remains a peerless playwright because of his remarkable insight into the human condition.