German priest resigns after 37 years to marry his 'great love'

DPA

Mon, August 24, 2026 at 8:33 AM EDT

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A German priest has announced his resignation from his parish after 37 years of service after revealing a previously secret romantic relationship with a woman.

"The reason is that I am getting married," Andreas Unfried stated on the website of the St Ursula parish, located in the Taunus region near Frankfurt in western Germany.

He said he had informed Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg of his decision to step down in order to marry his "great love."

 

Faith and Reason

What’s wrong with the right-wing ‘heritage American’ story

by David E. DeCosse and William O'Neill August 26, 2026

Credit: Images courtesy of Wikipedia. Illustration by America Media.

On June 25, the Supreme Court ruled that Haitians and Syrians lawfully residing in this country with Temporary Protected Status can be returned to their troubled homelands. 

After the decision, the right-wing political commentator Megyn Kelly said about Haitians: 

Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic and our culture and our values! You being here only dilutes it for us, those who built it and live it. And half of you people—more than half of you—won’t assimilate. We don’t want you!

Posted inMusic

The holiness of Dolly Parton

by James Martin, S.J. August 27, 2026

Dolly Parton performs in concert in Tokyo, July 30, 1979. Credit: AP Photo/Tsugufumi Matsumoto

Like millions of others, I found myself surprisingly saddened, even to the point of tears, by the death of Dolly Parton.

Of course, like those same millions of people, I was a huge fan of this woman with an outsized musical talent. She was a regular voice on the radio from my earliest years; I vividly remember eating cereal as a 13-year-old on a school morning and hearing her plaintive cri de coeur, “Jolene,” on the pink, plug-in, Bakelite radio that sat atop  our kitchen counter. Around that time, I also remember catching her on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, when I would kiss my parents good night, as they sat propped up in bed watching Johnny and Dolly.

The sheer incompetence of Pete Hegseth

 

Lethally Stupid

The sheer incompetence of Pete Hegseth

The Editors

August 27, 2026

Editorial

Politics

Donald Trump

Please email comments to letters@commonwealmagazine.org.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington April 6, 2026 (OSV News photo/Evan Vucci, Reuters).

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Pete Hegseth, formerly the cohost of Fox & Friends Weekend, has struggled to find his footing as secretary of defense. Still, the extent of the damage he has inflicted on the U.S. military in the past two years is alarming. Hegseth’s fantasies of Christian-nationalist crusades, his juvenile obsession with pull-ups and testosterone levels in troops, his reckless and discriminatory purges of high-level military leaders, and above all his sheer incompetence have left our military not only incapable of winning its current war of choice in Iran, but also increasingly vulnerable in case of future wars of necessity.

Child sexual abuse needs a public health response. The Catholic Church can help.

 

• 

  JoAnn Stevelos

Child sexual abuse needs a public health response. The Catholic Church can help.   ncr

 

Building a civilization of love against a culture of power

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas rejects the global culture of military and economic dominance, calling instead for a “civilization of love” centered on human dignity, shared responsibility, and the common good.

Ruben Mendoza

August 25, 2026

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In his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV criticizes the culture of power that undergirds the problem of war and the development of advanced weaponry.

As he puts it, “In our time, a culture of power is taking hold, in which the availability of resources and the ability to dominate tend to dictate the agenda and criteria for decision-making. In this way, the common good of humanity is relegated to the background and the concrete tragedy of peoples at war is reduced to a secondary consideration in relation to strategic interests” (MH 188).

Posted inNews

Pope Leo explains why Vatican II needed to reform the Catholic Mass

by Carol Glatz - Catholic News Service August 26, 2026

Pope Leo XIV talks to visitors and pilgrims during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Aug. 26, 2026. Credit: (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — “Firmly rooted” in the Church’s living tradition, the liturgical reform put forth by the Second Vatican Council grew from the need for the faithful to celebrate the liturgy more “consciously and actively,” and not “as strangers and silent spectators,” Pope Leo XIV said.

“The faithful ‘cannot and must no longer remain silent and passive. Their physical presence cannot be reconciled with their spiritual absence,'” he said, quoting Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini of Milan, the future Pope Paul VI and saint, who was attending the council’s first session at the time in 1962.

A 3:00 a.m. meditation

 

The Wolf and the Shepherd

A 3:00 a.m. meditation

Timothy P. Schilling

August 12, 2026

The Last Word

Spirituality

Please email comments to letters@commonwealmagazine.org.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Good Shepherd, 1902–3 (Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University/Wikimedia Commons)

When I was young, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. The next thing I knew, it was morning. A friend once told me, “That’s a blessing.” Now I am older and on most nights I wake at some point. I may lie awake just briefly or for as long as an hour or two. On the whole, I don’t mind it. I figure it’s time God has given me for prayer. I’ve developed a routine. First, I count the day’s blessings. Then I pray, slowly and intentionally, a Glory Be, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and Psalm 23. Finally, I pray for all the people in my life. I especially like praying Psalm 23, with its green pastures and still waters and high road of righteousness. It’s a lovely nighttime outing. Praying it reminds me of the Hemingway character who, when he couldn’t sleep, mentally fished over the trout streams of his youth. And of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who, in her dreams, chased butterflies and birds.