EPPC - George Weigel RSS Feed

The Relentless Grittiness of Lent

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST

Lent is a privileged time for recovering the sight and the commitment that let us see and enter the passion play going on in our everyday surroundings.

Ralph McInerny and the Tragedy of Notre Dame

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST

Ralph McInerny, who died on January 29, was arguably the most distinguished scholar ever to work at the University of Notre Dame and a man who understood the true greatness to which a Catholic university should aspire.

The Vatican and the Russians

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST

In late 2009, the Holy See and the Russian Federation agreed to full diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level; a remarkable achievement, but one fraught with complexities. The future relationship between the Russian Orthodox and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, in particular, bears significance for internal Catholic unity, ecumenism, and international relations.

Robert Charles Susil, 1974-2010

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST

Whining Russians

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST

Everything about the Russian whining over Evgeni Plushenko's second place finish in Vancouver in men's figure skating neatly matches the dominant themes of much of Russian public life since the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Erosion of Religious Freedom

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST

Religious freedom, rightly understood, cannot be reduced to freedom of worship. Religious freedom includes the right to preach and evangelize, to make religiously informed moral arguments in the public square, and to conduct the affairs of one's religious community without undue interference from the state.

The Lessons of Jean-Marie Lustiger

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST

In June 2003, Pope John Paul II published his last notable contribution to the Catholic Church’s reflection on the culture of political modernity, the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Europa which can be read as a papal report card on how well, or how poorly, a newly united Europe was living its first period of uncontested peace and freedom since 1914. The report card gave Europe mixed grades.

Rediscovering the Sounds of Silence

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST

We're surrounded by noise. Stores and restaurants are full of canned music; an NBA or NHL game is an exercise in noise-pain management; there is virtually no public space, outside art museums and courtrooms, where our aural senses are not under assault. Churches should be different.

Papal Environmentalism: Pro-Life and Pro-Marriage

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST

According to Pope Benedict XVI, a consistent Catholic environmentalism must include the defense of life from conception until natural death and the defense of marriage as the stable union of a man and a woman.

Truths Still Held? John Courtney Murray’s "American Proposition," Fifty Years Later

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

A half century after the publication of We Hold These Truths, EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel will look closely at the legacy of John Courtney Murray's thought and its supreme relevance to the current crises in our public life in his 2010 Simon Lecture: Truths Still Held? John Courtney Murray's "American Proposition," Fifty Years Later.

Lord, Please Don’t Hear This Prayer – Yet Again

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

Formulaic Prayers of the Faithful used in many Catholic parishes seem to assume that the world of politics is, somehow, the real world: after a brief intercessory nod to the pope, the bishops, or both, we're immediately invited to pray for sundry social and political causes, never identified as such but wrapped in the gauziness of Feel Good Prayer.

Epiphany, History, and Us

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

The manifestation of the child Jesus to the gentile Magi at the Epiphany celebrates the coming of the Incarnate Word into human history. And if that stupendous event is, in truth, the pivot on which the entire human story turns, then the Solemnity of the Epiphany is, with Easter, one of the two great pivotal moments of the Church's year of grace.

America’s Roman college at 150

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

The Pontifical North American College in Rome celebrates its 150th anniversary in this, the Year for Priests. Past graduates of the NAC have served the Church in the United States in good times and in bad, but the college's current priests-to-be may well face some of the greatest challenges yet.

GREAT PLACES: The Shrine at Fifty

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is one of Catholicism's Great Places: a catechism in stone, mosaic, and glass.

Books for Christmas

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

They're not all new, the books that follow, but they're all well worth reading, and giving.

The Just-War Tradition

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

President Obama's lifting up of the venerable just war tradition -- in which proportionate and discriminate armed force must always be understood to be in the pursuit of peace, which is the fruit of justice, security, and freedom -- and which has deep roots in the civilizational soil of the West, was entirely welcome, if not to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Willful Blindness and the Ft. Hood Massacre

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Fort Hood killings should remind us of two things: that America's security remains threatened by our government's institutional refusal to take the religious roots of jihadism seriously; and that, as Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out, the way to new and potentially more fruitful Christian-Islamic dialogue begins by insisting than any such conversation focus on the hard questions -- religious freedom as a fundamental human right, and the separation of religious and political authority in a just state.

Natural law = Bigotry? Please.

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Washington Post's recent attack on a politician's use of natural law language -- language used by Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pope John Paul II alike -- represents a crude attempt to drive classical moral understandings out of the public square by smearing their advocates as morally coarse anti-social misfits.

The Vatican and the Lefebvrists: Not a Negotiation

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The conversations between Rome and Society of St. Pius X leaders are not negotiations, for there is nothing to be negotiated; nor is this a dialogue between equal partners. Rather, the conversations now underway are an act of pastoral charity by the Pope, who is quite clear about the settled doctrine of the Church and who wishes to invite all, including members of the SSPX, to adhere to that doctrine.

George and Betsy, Sixty Years Later

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Remembering George and Betsy Weigel, who would have marked their diamond wedding anniversary on November 12.