Vocation crisis: Is Vatican II to blame?

Those holding the Second Vatican Council responsible for the decline in priestly vocations should examine whether their families have done what is needed to foster vocations. 

Lavoisier Fernandes

July 16, 2026

Share your comments (3)

Few topics in the Catholic Church continue to generate as much debate as the legacy of the Second Vatican Council. More than fifty years after its conclusion, Vatican II remains central to discussions about liturgy, Church life, and the decline in priestly and religious vocations.

Recent Vatican decrees concerning the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), following the illicit consecration of four bishops without papal approval, have once again brought to the fore questions regarding how the Council reforms have been understood and implemented

A common claim emerging from these debates is that Vatican II introduced a modernizing shift that weakened Catholic identity and contributed to the decline in vocations.

Posted inFaith and Reason

Read: Cardinal Grech’s speech on synodality to Pope Leo and the consistory of cardinals

by Mario Grech July 13, 2026

Pope Leo XIV, with Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, listens to and answers questions from participants in the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies in the Vatican audience hall Oct. 24, 2025. Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media

Editors’ note: This address of Cardinal Mario Grech at the extraordinary consistory of bishops convened at the Vatican from June 26-27, 2026, has been edited for style. 

I gladly and gratefully take the floor to share some reflections on what has begun to unfold throughout the church during these years of the synodal journey. During this consistory of June 26-7, 2026, the theme of synodality has been broached so extensively. That is a clear confirmation not only that an increasing number of people are developing a deeper understanding of Catholic synodality, but also that they are beginning to live out and extend its prophetic dimension. This widespread engagement shows that synodality is moving beyond a theoretical concept. 

Revisiting Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’

 

‘Mystery Territory’

Revisiting Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’

Antonio Spadaro

July 15, 2026

Movies

Culture

Religion

Please email comments to letters@commonwealmagazine.org.

Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) (Sunset Boulevard)

I met up with Martin Scorsese on June 12, in his office. He was deep in his work—he is always deep in his work—but we sat down together, unhurried, to talk. We spoke about the screenplay for his possible new film on Jesus, and we came back around to The Last Temptation of Christ. “It took such a beating, back then,” he told me, with that mixture of astonishment and sorrow that settles over him whenever he speaks of it. And then he told me about Paul Alfonso Soto, a student of Mary Karr, a writer friend of his: “He’s just won a major prize—a poet, thirty years old, a hard life, but he came out of it on his own. He has a real spiritual life now. And she told me that the thing that changed his mind, that brought him to Jesus, was The Last Temptation, exactly that.” We had spoken about the film in our book Dialoghi sulla fede (published in English as Conversations on Faith).

The US has entered a national era of cruelty

 

Guest Voices

Opinion

The US has entered a national era of cruelty

Tom Roberts   ncr

Chicago priest and social activist under investigation for abuse allegation he denies

 

July 15, 2026

Chicago priest and social activist under investigation for abuse allegation he denies

Gina Christian, OSV News  ncr

Posted inVatican Dispatch

SSPX appeals Vatican decision, claiming excommunication is ‘suspended’

by Colleen Dulle July 14, 2026

Newly consecrated Society of St. Pius X Bishop Michael Goldade, an American, is seen kissing the ring of Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta during an SSPX liturgical celebration July 1, 2026, in Écône, Switzerland. Credit: OSV News photo/CPP

The Society of St. Pius X—the group that the Vatican declared to be in schism on July 2—has begun the process of appealing the Vatican’s declaration. It claims that beginning the appeal process “has the effect of suspending” the execution of the Vatican decree.

In a statement released Monday, July 13, the SSPX revealed that on July 11 it had submitted a “preliminary recourse” to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that had issued the schism decree.

Did the omnipresence of death during the pandemic turn us rightward?

Memento Mori

Did the omnipresence of death during the pandemic turn us rightward?

Colin Dickey

June 30, 2026

Please email comments to letters@commonwealmagazine.org.

What do the lingering signs of the pandemic mean for us today? (Silvina Brodersohn/iStock Photo)

Occasionally, one still sees the physical traces. A weathered, scuffed-up sticker on the floor of a business, faded letters reading “PLEASE KEEP 6 FT DISTANCE.” A universally ignored sign on a salon door stating that masks are required. An unused delivery window on a fast-casual eatery from when they closed the dining room. The reminders of the worldwide pandemic that has so far taken more than 7 million lives are everywhere, though apparently no one cares much to notice them.

I pass by these signs every day, their instructions powerless, fading into the visual noise of the city. They’re everywhere, but what do they mean now? That we won, that it’s over? That we failed? Are they mementos of the dead, or reassurances that we survived? Or reminders of the powerlessness of words and rules when order has broken down?

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel takes on popes, delves into end-times theology

 

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel takes on popes, delves into end-times theology

News

• ncr

  Brian Fraga