LIKE MOST denizens of Washington, I pay too little attention to the sites other Americans make sacrifices to visit. Earlier this month though, prompted by reading James Scott’s “Target Tokyo,” a comprehensive history of the famous Doolittle Raid of April 18, 1942, I strolled through Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., in search of three graves.
Author: George Weigel
The German Catholic Crisis of Faith
A report for the synod suggests that German Catholic thinking is virtually indistinguishable from that of non-believers on matters of marriage, the family, the morality of human love and the things that make for genuine happiness.
Cardinal George Made the Difference
On Sept. 2, 1939, the House of Commons debated the British government’s response to the German invasion of Poland the previous day. The ruling Conservative Party was badly divided between those demanding that Britain fulfill its obligations to Poland and those addicted to the habits of appeasement. “Party loyalty” was being invoked to drown out […]
John Paul II and ‘America’
IN THE YEARS PRECEDING the Great Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II held a series of continental synods to help the Church in different locales reflect on its distinctive situation at the end of the second millennium, and to plan for a future of evangelical vigor in the third. These Special Assemblies were easily named in the case of the Synods for Africa, Asia and Europe. But when it came to the Synod for the western hemisphere, John Paul threw a linguistic curveball that made an important point.
Remembering No. 84, Jim Mutscheller
Jim Mutscheller, who died on April 10, wanted to be known as a man “who had led a good life,” for he was “quiet, humble, and so conservative that he’d eat crabs with a suit and tie on.” And therein lies a tale – and a yardstick by which to measure pro sports then and now.
‘Wolf Hall’ and Anti-Catholicism
“WOLF HALL,” THE BBC adaptation of Hillary Mantel’s novel about early Tudor England, began airing on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theater” Easter Sunday night. It’s brilliant television. It’s also a serious distortion of history. And it proves, yet again, that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry in elite circles in the Anglosphere.
Newman and Vatican II
What might we learn from John Henry Newman about the proper way to “read” Vatican II, as we anticipate the 50th anniversary of its conclusion on Dec. 8?
Easter and Evangelism
GALATIANS 1:15-18 is not your basic witness-to-the-Resurrection text. Yet St. Paul’s mini-spiritual autobiography helps us understand just how radically the experience of the Risen Lord changed the first disciples’ religious worldview, and why an evangelical imperative was built into that experience.
The ‘Tyranny of the Possible’
Ten years after his death, Pope St. John Paul II looms even larger than he did a decade ago. What seems most memorable was that he refused to accommodate to the “tyranny of the possible.”
The Indomitable and Effective Cardinal Pell
Shortly after Cardinal George Pell was named Archbishop of Melbourne, he instituted several reforms at the archdiocesan seminary, including daily Mass and the daily celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, both of which had fallen by the wayside in the preceding years.