ON CATHOLIC CAMPUSES that aspire to Top Ten or Top Twenty status in publicity sweepstakes like the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, one sometimes hears the phrase “preferred peers.” Translated into plain English from faux-sociologese, that means the schools to which we’d like to be compared (and be ranked with).
Author: George Weigel
Flaws in Taking the ‘Long View’ on Russia
Queried about the Holy See’s less-than-vigorous response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, senior Vatican officials are given to saying – often with a dismissive tone, as if the question came from a dimwit – “We take the long view.” On the diplomatic side, that “long view” seems to be a reprise of the Ostpolitik of Cardinal […]
The Amazing, and Now Venerable, Father Al
AT AN INCH OR so over five feet and weighing, I would guess, something on the underside of 100 pounds, Sister Winnie, a soft-spoken Filipina, is not your typical dinner speaker. Yet a few weeks ago she held a room full of Washingtonians spellbound with her story, which is also the story of a largely unknown American […]
Flannery O’Connor and Catholic Realism
From this vale of tears, one can never be sure about the boundaries of acceptable behavior at the Throne of Grace. Is laughter at earthly foibles permitted? I like to think so. Which inclines me to believe that this past June, Miss Mary Flannery O’Connor of Milledgeville, Georgia, was having a good cackle.
Progressive Catholic Authoritarianism
BACK IN THE late 1960s or thereabouts, Father Andrew Greeley, the model of an old-fashioned liberal Catholic, accused Father Daniel Berrigan (the beau ideal of post-conciliar Catholic radicalism) of harboring an authoritarian streak in his politics. Father Greeley meant that, were Father Berrigan and his radical friends to achieve power, their aggressive sense of moral superiority would lead them to put Father Greeley and his liberal friends in jail. It was classic hyperbole for Father Greeley, but like some of his polemics, there was a grain of truth in it.
The Church and The New Normal
IN THE WAKE of the Supreme Court’s marriage decision, these sober thoughts occur: (1) The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has rendered a decision that puts the Court at odds with the Constitution, with reason and with biblical religion.
The Summer Reading List
FIFTY YEARS AGO, prior to my freshman year at Baltimore’s St. Paul Latin H.S., the late Father W. Vincent Bechtel introduced me to The Summer Reading List, upper-case. Father Bechtel didn’t fool around: He tossed his teenage charges into the deep end of the English and American literature pool and told us, in effect, “Start swimming.”
The Kasper Theory of Democracy?
A few weeks ago, after Ireland voted to approve so-called “same-sex marriage,” a correspondent sent me an e-mail quoting Cardinal Walter Kasper’s comment on the result: “A democratic state has the duty to respect the will of the people, and it seems clear that, if the majority of the people wants such homosexual unions, the state has a duty to recognize such rights.”
Themes for Surviving “Ordinary Time”
I’M FORTUNATE TO hear good preaching on a regular basis. But even the best Catholic preaching leans far more toward moral exhortation than biblical exposition. This strikes me as a missed opportunity. For if one of the tasks of preaching today is to help the people of the Church “see” the world and our lives more clearly by piercing through the regnant fog of cultural confusion, then there’s no substitute for expository preaching that digs into the biblical text, unpacks it and shows how it provides a unique optic on the here-and-now.
The Myth of Washington Gridlock
Political gridlock is regularly deplored by pols, pundits and citizens alike. My contrarian view is that it can serve useful public purpose.