WHEN I WAS first introduced to the fascinations of the DNA double-helix in a biology class at Baltimore’s St. Paul Latin H.S., 50 years ago, the “unraveling” of this key to unlocking the mysteries of human genetics had taken place just a dozen years before. Yet, in the five decades since my classmates and I built plastic models of the double-helix, humanity’s knowledge of its genetic code has grown exponentially. And it seems likely that, as a species, we’re only at the threshold of our capacity to use this knowledge for good or ill.
Author: George Weigel
Resist the Temptation to Domesticate God
SOME BIBLICAL SCHOLARS consider the Book of Deuteronomy to be a collection of sermons: catechetical homilies on the great theme of the Exodus and the fulfillment of that epic adventure in God’s gifts of the Law and the land to the people of Israel.
Why Church Fights The Culture War
THOSE WHO PERSIST in denying that the Church is engaged in a culture war, the combatants in which are aptly called the “culture of life” and the “culture of death,” might ponder this June blog post by my summer pastor in rural Québec, Father Tim Moyle:
Ecumenism and Influence-Envy
Defending the indefensible is never pretty. Or so we’re reminded by recent attempts from the portside of the Catholic commentariat to defend the madcap analysis of America’s alleged “ecumenism of hate” that appeared last month in the Italian Catholic journal, La Civiltà Cattolica (edited by the Jesuits of Rome and published after vetting by the Secretariat of State of the Holy See).
Questions of Competence
IT’S A SAFE bet that 99.95 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics have never heard of La Civiltà Cattolica [Catholic Civilization], a journal founded in 1850 by Jesuits of Rome to combat evils of the age (then taken to be secularist liberalism and freemasonry). Its current circulation is perhaps half that of First Things, and while it’s recently made attempts to broaden readership by publishing English, Spanish, French and Korean editions, it’s also a safe bet that Civiltà Cattolica will remain a small-circulation magazine with a readership confined to what we might call “Catholic professionals:” clergy of various ranks; papal diplomats; officials of the Roman Curia; academics and pundits.
Are Jihadis “Losers”?
WHEN I FIRST visited Israel in 1988, my friend, Professor Menahem Milson, a distinguished Arabist at Hebrew University who was Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s military aide during Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977, told me that “you have to meet my friend, Colonel Yigal Carmon.”
The Cooler Cold War
THE CLAIM THAT “the Cold War is over” and that the West needs a “new paradigm” for relations with Russia has become an antiphon in some conservative political circles, not least conservative Christian circles. The call for serious and creative thinking about Russia is welcome and sensible. The claim that the Cold War is over is not, because Vladimir Putin never got that memo. Ignoring that reality means danger in devising any new paradigm.
Is The Church Being Awkward? Or Wise?
Asked to name books that gave me the greatest intellectual jolt in recent decades, I’d quickly cite two.
Fifty Years of Friendship With Cardinal Pell
Precisely 50 years ago this month, a tall, gangly Aussie named George Pell entered my life. By the end of August 1967, he had become a fast friend of my family. Today, the friendship is even closer and it is one of the great blessings of my life.
Summer Reading in the Bechtel Tradition
I RECENTLY MET the good people of St. Benedict Elementary School in South Natick, Mass., which offers classical Catholic education to some very fortunate youngsters. The extensive summer reading lists the school suggests to those kids’ parents put me in mind of my high school English teacher, the late Father W. Vincent Bechtel – who did not, however, do suggestions, and made sure that his charges kept their noses to the grindstone from June through August by assigning us at least a half-dozen novels every summer. Some of them, like Paul Horgan’s “Things As They Are,” I still re-read with pleasure, a half-century later.