Over 40 years of teaching and writing about Catholic social doctrine, George Weigel has known three men who had the opportunity to embody the Church’s social teaching for a national audience. Two of them couldn’t pull it off, for different reasons.
Guest Columnists
Autumn Is an Invitation to Hope
AT THIS TIME of year, falling leaves and flaming foliage come to those parts of the country where climates favor cold snaps, shorter days and deciduous, or leaf-shedding, trees.
Saints as Spouses
ROME – Amidst all the Sturm und Drang of Synod 2015, something genuinely new in the life of the Church began, and it shouldn’t escape our notice.
Seeing ‘the Other’ In the Year of Mercy
There is a touching image at the beginning of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography. As a little girl living in the projects in the Bronx, she recalls joining her cousins in her grandmother’s bedroom to make faces at passengers speeding by on the elevated train that ran at the height of the window.
A Blessed Loss
ROME – During Synod 2015, I’ve been reading John Martin Robinson’s “Cardinal Consalvi: 1757-1824,” a biography of Pope Pius VII’s secretary of state, one of the most impressive churchmen of his day, or indeed any day.
A Dangerous, Divisive Word
In our language and conceptual development, the definitions of “we” and “they” emerge quickly. Pope Francis urges us to open our hearts and minds to all.
Filipinos Celebrate Marian Feast
The Filipinos at St. Michael’s Church, Flushing, are blessed during the month of October. We also celebrate during the first Sunday, the feast of the Most Holy Rosary-La Naval de Manila.
A Meaningful Papal Handshake
Countless people tried to touch Pope Francis during his recent visit to the United States. Many succeeded. But one inmate at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia made contact in a firm handshake that was caught in a photograph that made Page 1 of The New York Times on the Monday morning when the pope returned to Rome.
Brooklyn Nun Reaches to Society’s Untouchables
When American-born nun Sister Annie Credidio moved to Ecuador in the mid-1980s to be a teacher, she attended Mass at a local hospital and noticed that members of the congregation were missing fingers, toes, legs, and teeth. She discovered that this was a hospital for people with Hansen’s disease (also known as leprosy). The more she explored the facility and talked to patients, the more she realized how deplorable conditions were.
Don’t Believe All You Hear
IT ALL STARTED when we heard unconfirmed reports that the pope had met with Kim Davis in a private audience during his visit to Washington. Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, recently denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds. Since same-sex civil marriage is now legal in the United States and county clerks are required by law to issue licenses, her actions sparked controversy – and rumor – especially after Davis met with the pope.