by George Weigel In a conversation about Russian Orthodoxy some dozen years ago, that famous source who can only be quoted off-the-record, the senior Vatican official, said to me, “They only know how to be chaplain to the czar – whoever he is.” Such asperity reflected deep frustration over the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow’s […]
by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk Discrimination is often understood as acting out of prejudice against persons who differ from us and do not share our views, traits, values or lifestyles. The word “discrimination,” however, has an older meaning as well, namely, to draw a clear distinction between proper and improper, good and evil, to differentiate and […]
by George Weigel Every once in a while, a truly special book comes down the theological pike: a book both scholarly and well-written, a book that stretches the imagination, a book that changes the state of a discussion, if it’s taken with the seriousness it deserves. The late Servais Pinckaers’ “Sources of Christian Ethics” was […]
Half an hour before sunrise on Ash Wednesday, hundreds of English-speakers from all over Rome begin walking to the ancient basilica of St. Sabina on the Aventine Hill. For St. Sabina is the first “station” in the Roman station church pilgrimage of Lent, a tradition dating back to the middle centuries of the first Christian millennium.
by George Weigel The Catholic Church began compiling “martyrologies” – lists of saints, typically martyrs – during the first centuries after Constantine. In the pre-Vatican II breviary, a reading from the Roman Martyrology, or what we might call the Catholic Book of Witnesses, was an integral part of the Office of Prime, the “hour” recited after […]
by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk CNN recently profiled the case of Marlise Munoz, who was both pregnant and brain dead. Its report noted that Munoz was “33 years old and 14 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child when her husband found her unconscious on their kitchen floor on November 26. Though doctors had pronounced her […]
by George Weigel When the Holy See signed the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, a friend knowledgeable in legal matters said, with considerable vehemence, that the Convention was a snare and a delusion that would eventually come back to bite the Vatican. The bite came earlier this month in a […]
by George Weigel Pete Seeger died on Jan. 27, rich in years – 94, to be exact – and in honors: a lifetime-achievement Grammy, the National Medal for the Arts. His death rated a segment on the PBS News Hour, during which the inconvenient fact that Seeger had been a member of the U.S. Communist Party […]
by George Weigel Papal approbation being no bad thing, I was delighted to learn that Pope Francis, in a homily a few weeks ago, had suggested that his congregants learn the date of their baptisms and celebrate it – which is precisely what I have been proposing to audiences around the country this past year […]
by George Weigel Twenty-five years ago, on Jan. 27, 1989, a joint statement from the communist government of Poland, the Solidarity trade union and the Catholic Church announced a national “Roundtable” to discuss the country’s future, including major structural issues of political and economic reform. The Roundtable began the following month; basic agreements were reached […]
