As Major League Baseball begins its post-season, let us pause and remember the late, great Bill Freehan of the Detroit Tigers, who died this past August 19: a Catholic gentleman and a great ballplayer.
Author: George Weigel
The Casaroli Myth and The Damage it Causes
When I met Cardinal Agostino Casaroli on February 14, 1997, the architect of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik and its soft-spoken approach to communist regimes in east-central Europe in the 1960s and 1970s could not have been more cordial.
Catholic ‘Beliefs’ and The Abortion Debate
Do Catholics “believe that human life begins at conception” — a formulation that’s become ubiquitous in recent weeks?
A Bold Catholic Investment In Inner-City Education
It’s a safe bet that “Mother Mary Lange” is not a household name in most U.S. Catholic circles. That unhappy state of affairs may change, though, thanks to a courageous initiative now underway in Baltimore, one of America’s most troubled cities. Who was the Servant of God Mother Mary Lange, O.S.P.?
The Mighty Pen of Father Paul Mankowski, SJ
In the summer before the Second Vatican Council opened, Pope John XXIII met with Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens in the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. “I know what my part in the Council will be,” the Pope told the Belgian archbishop. “It will be to suffer.” Pope John was prescient, and not just because the Council’s opening weeks would prove contentious; shortly before Vatican II began its work, the Pope was diagnosed with the painful cancer that would kill him in less than a year.
Vatican Diplomacy Making a Difference
This past June 25, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States — usually dubbed the “Vatican’s foreign minister” — told a press conference that he and his colleagues didn’t believe that the Vatican’s speaking out publicly on the massive repression underway in Hong Kong “would make any difference whatever.”
Wanted: A Catholic Chaim Potok
In the three decades since the Revolution of 1989, Poland’s many cultural achievements include mastering the craft of creating the 21st-century historical museum.
A Church in Mission or A Church in Meetings?
On the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2013, Pope Francis completed the work of the 2012 Synod of Bishops with the apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), issuing a ringing call for the entire Church to “embark on a new chapter of evangelization.” Catholicism, the Pope urged, must move from maintenance to mission: “from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry.”
Pope Leo XIII & Contemporary Catholic Contentions
Given everything else going on these days, it may seem strange that a 129-year-old encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, founding father of modern Catholic social doctrine, should have become a shuttlecock in the volleys exchanged by conservative Ameri- can legal theorists and commentators.
Moral Courage and the Many Cultures of Death
Thanks to the pandemic, it’s been two years since I was last in Krakow, where for three decades I’ve done extensive research and taught great students while forming friendships with many remarkable people.