by George Weigel THIS PAST AUGUST, while contemplating the beauties of the Ottawa River from the deck of my family’s cottage on Allumette Island, Father Raymond de Souza, the Canadian commentator and a former-student-become-friend-and-colleague, offered an interesting take on World Youth Day 2016, which will be held in Kraków. When you think about it, he […]
by Stephen Kent “WE HAVE TO DO something.” That instinctual desire to take action has been ingrained in the American psyche since the colonial days. Yes, we have to do something about the chemical weapon killings in Syria, but that something cannot be more violence. Once again, we have the urge to resort to violence […]
by George Weigel IN A REVIEW quoted on the back cover of Ian Ker’s G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford), Susan Elkin suggests that Father Ker’s book “has the potential to establish Chesterton in what Ker regards as his rightful place as a major English author.” That’s certainly true; but one does wonder about that “Ker regards…” business. […]
by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk People sometimes use the phrase “moral compass” to describe the innate sense of right and wrong that human beings have. President Obama, for example, recently mentioned in one of his speeches how we need to, “keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.” Although he didn’t spell out what […]
by George Weigel KRAKOW – The chapel in the archbishop’s residence in Krakow – which everyone calls by its street name, “Franciszkanska 3” – has witnessed a lot of modern Church history. Here, clandestine seminarians watched the city’s heroic archbishop, Adam Stefan Sapieha, put the terrible problems of the long, dark night of Occupation before […]
by George Weigel KRAKOW, Poland – The village of Pasierbiec is in the south of Poland, about 30 miles from the old royal capital of Krakow. Its church, the Basilica of Our Lady of Consolation, is full of votum gifts testifying to favors received through the intercession of the basilica’s namesake. (The church itself reminds […]
by Father John P. Cush “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan. Random House (New York, 2013). 333 pp., $27. Some speak of a contemporary third quest for the historical Jesus. For a definition of the historical Jesus, a contemporary scholar, John P. Meier, states: “the Jesus whom we can […]
by George Weigel AS I REMEMBER it, the Civil War centenary, which coincided with my middle school years, got far more public attention than the war’s sesquicentennial has received. There were a flurry of Gettysburg sesquicentennial columns and book reviews in July; the “Civil War Daily Gazette” (www.civilwardailygazette.com) provides a reminder, in detail and every 24 hours, […]
by George Weigel IN THE WAKE of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s homicide convictions this past May, several state legislatures began crafting laws that would protect unborn life at earlier stages of gestation while shutting down horror houses like Gosnell’s Philadelphia “clinic.” Whether these laws will stand constitutional scrutiny remains to be seen; what is worth noting now […]
by George Weigel IN HIS JUNE 13 testimony before the National Security Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform, Dr. Thomas Farr of Georgetown’s Berkley Center described the failures of U.S. international religious freedom policy over the past decade and a half and suggested some of the structural reasons for that failure: lack of […]
