Downsizing-to-grow in Ireland
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday, November 25, 2011
While there has been no one cause of Ireland's radical secularization, the Church in Ireland had best look to itself, its sins, its errors, and its unbecoming alliance with political power as it considers how to begin anew.  [Read More]

Remembering Bill Doherty
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday, November 18, 2011
Bill Doherty, who died on August 28, 2011, was one of the great Catholic laymen of twentieth century America. A bear of a man who had been a defensive lineman at Catholic University during his student days, Bill dedicated his professional life to trade unionism as an instrument of democracy-building (and hence peace-making) in Latin America.  [Read More]

Must the Roman Curia be Italian?
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday, November 11, 2011
The universal ministry of the pope in the Evangelical Catholicism to which Vatican II and the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are giving birth is going to require a different kind of central administration, a different kind of Roman Curia.  [Read More]

Breaking Bad Liturgical Habits
By George Weigel
Posted: Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The long-awaited introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal on November 27, the First Sunday of Advent, offers the Church in the Anglosphere an opportunity to reflect on the riches of the liturgy, its biblical vocabulary, and its virtually inexhaustible storehouse of images.  [Read More]

The Emerging Crisis in Ukraine
By George Weigel
Posted: Tuesday, November 1, 2011
That the Ukrainian government would conduct, publicly, a trial on trumped up and politically motivated charges, and that the court would return a guilty verdict with a heavy penalty (including a $190 million fine on top of the prison sentence) - as it has in the recent trial of Yulia Tymoshenko - makes quite clear that the current authorities have little regard for justice or democratic norms of governance; an especially troubling prospect with revanchist Russia looming to the east.  [Read More]

The Ecumenical Future
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday, October 21, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI's remarks last month (at the former Augustinian priory where Martin Luther studied theology) was a reminder that, when it comes to evangelization, preaching Jesus Christ crucified and the transforming power of personal friendship with the Risen Lord is going to win out, every time, over enticing men and women into a religious trade union or cultural club.  [Read More]

The Lay Reform of Church and World
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday, October 14, 2011
Decadence and democracy can't co-exist indefinitely. Two volumes recently published by Encounter Books—Marcello Pera's Why We Must Call Ourselves Christians and Living the Call by Michael Novak and William Simon—sketch a common way beyond decay.  [Read More]

9/11, Benedict XVI, and Regensburg
By George Weigel
Posted: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
On the fifth anniversary of his Regensburg Lecture, it's worth reviewing what Pope Benedict XVI proposed, not least because the 9/11 anniversary commentary assiduously avoided the question that the Holy Father courageously confronted: the question of what-must-change in Islam in the future, to prevent an ongoing global war of Islam-against-the-rest.  [Read More]

Tim Tebow and Christophobia
By George Weigel
Posted: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
It is unimaginable that any prominent Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh player would be subjected to the vileness that is publicly dumped on Denver Broncos's quaterback, Tim Tebow. Tolerance, that supreme virtue of the culture of radical relativism, does not extend to evangelical Christians, it seems.  [Read More]

Father Barron’s “Catholicism”
By George Weigel
Posted: Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Father Robert Barron knows that the Catholic Church is a community of sinners whose infidelities have often marred the face of the Lord. At the same time, Father Barron's new series, Catholicism, displays the innumerable ways that the Catholic Church has been and remains a force for truth, decency, compassion, and sanity in an often-cruel world. It's a must see.  [Read More]