Jason Berry

Book review: Navigating between Germany's reckoning with Nazism and the reactionary grip of Southern myth, Learning From the Germans tells the stories of people facing a historical memory they want to change.

Ellis Marsalis Jr. began his teaching career in the 1960s at Xavier University, the nation's only historically black Roman Catholic college. The news on April 1 that he had died of COVID-19-related pneumonia opened a river of national tributes for New Orleans' premier jazz pianist, professor and the patriarch of a musical family with remarkable aesthetic reach.

Tourism keeps New Orleans going in usual times, but Mardi Gras season visitors and gatherings may have accelerated the spread of coronavirus. Now with most venues shut down and spring festivals canceled, the city counts the costs.

On December 21, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Sodano as dean of the College of Cardinals. Like a bull stampeding moral values, the 92-year-old prelate practiced Machiavellian politics on a breathtaking scale and was the great protector of Marcial Maciel and other notorious predators.

Book review: Christianity's growth in the decades after the crucifixion is a narrative seeded with mysteries. Some two millennia later, questions still beget questions over the way Christianity branched out from small home-church enclaves.

Commentary, Part 3 of 3: The church's cover-up debacle owes greatly to John Paul II. In 1989, U.S. bishops sought the authority to defrock child predators. John Paul refused. For years, I wondered why.

Commentary, Part 2 of 3: For years, bishops proclaimed the sanctity of life in the womb while playing musical chairs with child molesters. They kept the closed system operating, until insiders leaked information.

Commentary, Part 1 of 3: Pope Francis is trying to chart a way out of the long, aching scandal by forging standards where few exist. How did the crisis reach this stage? What feasible reforms can the pope engineer?

One of New Orleans' most popular priests, Fr. Jerome LeDoux, died Jan 7. He served as pastor of St. Augustine Catholic Church for 16 years, establishing it as a welcoming space for people of different faiths.

Appreciation: Jason Berry remembers Richard Sipe, a major voice in the clergy sexual abuse scandal, and the metaphor for a conflicted church that was Sipe's feud with Andrew Greeley.