During his years as professor of fundamental theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella was often cited by American seminarians as their favorite professor — an exponent of dynamic orthodoxy whose engaging classroom style was a blessed relief from the stolid ways of the Roman academy. Later, after Pope John Paul II issued Fides et Ratio [Faith and Reason], the 1998 encyclical that set Voltaire spinning in his grave, the joke in Rome was that, given the text’s likely drafters, the “F” and “R” in Fides and Ratio stood for “Fisichella” and “Ratzinger.”
Author: George Weigel
An Open Letter To J.D. Vance
Dear Senator Vance:
As Americans celebrate a unique national holiday, the origins of which remind us that our democracy is an experiment in ordered liberty “under God,” let me wish you and your family a happy and holy Thanksgiving. You will soon take the oath of office as Vice President of the United States. Several of your predecessors took a dim view of the vice presidency, as you surely know. The first vice president, John Adams, called it the “most insignificant office” ever devised by the mind of man.
A Too-Little-Known Christian Witness
The Venerable Andrei Sheptytsky, who died eighty years ago on November 1, 1944, was one of 20th century Catholicism’s outstanding figures, whose remarkable life and heroic ministry as leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church spanned 43 years, two world wars, five pontificates, Stalin’s terror-famine (the “Holodomor,” in which at least six million Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death), and a half-dozen changes of government in the territories in which he served.
Vatican’s Ongoing China Policy Scandal
In the annals of historical boorishness, it would be hard to find something more egregious than the Holy See’s timing as it renewed its 2018 agreement with the People’s Republic of China, which allows the Chinese Communist Party a significant role in the appointment of Catholic bishops.
Meditation on a Roman Pizza
Pizza in the Eternal City tends to exemplify a proposition I have long defended: what crossed the Atlantic going west was usually improved in the process. I like Roman pizza, as I like Rome, but I like New York pizza, Chicago pizza, Detroit pizza, and just about every other variant of American pizza — except Hawaiian — more. Still, when in Rome, do as the Romans.
An Open Letter to The Synod Secretary
The “National Synthesis of the People of God in the United States of America for the Diocesan Phase of the 2021-2023 Synod,” prepared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is a very disappointing document, not least because it largely focuses on what the 1% of U.S. Catholics who participated in these “synodal” discussions find wrong with the Church
Thank You, Your Majesty the Queen
Americans have many reasons to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II, one of the few truly noble figures on the contemporary world stage.
On the Accelerating Passage of Time
In one of his Blackford Oakes novels, William F. Buckley, Jr. had a character crack a Wagnerian joke along these lines: What is Siegfried? Siegfried is the opera that begins at 7 p.m. and when you wake up three hours later, you’re shocked to find out that it’s only 7:30.
Elizabeth Warren, Woke Totalitarian
What would the bill touted by Senator Warren do? A justifiably irate editorial in National Review gave the nasty details.
Another Assault On John Paul II
On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II had lunch in the papal apartment with Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the renowned French pediatrician and geneticist who identified the chromosomal abnormality that causes Down Syndrome.
