EPPC - George Weigel RSS Feed

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.

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.

Forgetting the Fall

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The president's absence bespeaks a woodenheadeness about the history of our times: a woodenheadness likely influenced by the classic left-liberal notion that the Cold War was just an action-reaction cycle between two "great powers", not a moral contest for the human future between imperfect democracies and pluperfect dictatorships.

Saint Jeanne Jugan

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A culture of filial impiety casts into sharp relief the October canonization of Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Norwegian Sanctimony, Global Folly

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EST

President Barack Obama has a golden opportunity to do something about this dangerous and willful Euro-naivete when he accepts the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in December.

Another Black Legend, Down the Chute

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EST

Recent scholarship on the history of Church-State relations in Europe should remind us that the establishment of religious freedom had more to do with the ethical limits of government than with a public segregation of faith and reason. A fact that bears repeating in today's secularized society.

Irving Kristol, Catholic Social Ethicist?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EST

Irving Kristol was a great defender of the principle of subsidiarity, which gave this Jewish thinker a rather "Catholic" view of social ethics.

Some Cold War Truths

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EST

Looking back over the distance of two decades one can rediscover several truths about the way the Cold War came to an end. This is true in particular of the role played by the Catholic Church in the conclusion of this epic struggle. We forget these lessons in truth at our own peril.

Job Revisited: Notes of an Orioles Fan

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EST

Secular modernity teaches us that we can only come to know and honor universal truths by stripping ourselves of our particularities. Precisely the opposite is true, as baseball demonstrates. Our national pastime offers a reminder of the sacramental nature of the world around us and the significance of "the person just in front of us."

The Death of Edward Kennedy and the End of an Era

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EST

The death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy marks the end of an era for America and American Catholics.

The Remarkable Rose Hawthorne

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EST

Rose Hawthorne saw in disfigured men and women suffering from horrible cancers what the lead character in her father Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birthmark" could not see in the near-perfection of his beautiful wife: the face of Christ.

Faith and Reason, Irrationality and Terror

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EST

George Weigel looks at the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI to Muslim leaders in Cameroon, and what the Pope is saying to the world about faith and reason.

Homecoming

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EST

George Weigel passes on a massage of thanks from an Iraq veteran, a man who through his vocation "found something even tougher than the training he received in the armed forces and he's in love with what he found, even though it took him to the hard streets of Newark."

Undesirables

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EST

George Weigel looks at the unsavory, and too-often unknown, relationship between racism, eugenics and abortion. But you don't have to take his word for it, just ask Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.