Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

Three On the Square posts for you today! I hope you have an extra-long lunch break ( and don’t forget about Helen Rittelmeyer ).

First, we’ve got George Weigel’s continued meditations on Poland :

John Paul II had a keen insight into the way in which the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century had shredded the moral and spiritual fabric of humanity. The Gulag and the Nazi death camps, the Ukrainian terror famine, the genocide of the Chinese “cultural revolution,” the Cambodian genocide—all of this, and more, had left 21st-century humanity with a terrible burden of guilt. And to whom could those terrible crimes be confessed: those sins that had made an abattoir out of a century imagined, at its outset, to be one of unlimited human progress? How could the guilt piled up by so many crimes be expiated?

Then, read Filip Mazurczak’s interview with Gary Krupp about Pope Pius XII (here’s a sample question):
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the inner circle of Winston Churchill were informed of the destruction of European Jewry by Jan Karski of the Polish underground, yet were dismissive of his pleas. Why is there so much talk of the “silent pope” but not the “silent president” or the “silent prime minister”?

And, last but definitely not least, Senator Mike Lee’s speech to AEI yesterday :
Government at all levels—but especially in Washington, not coincidentally now home to six of America’s ten wealthiest counties—is in effect redistributing opportunity from the poor and middle class . . . to government itself and its clients and cronies.

And that’s it! What are you still reading this post for? There’s so much more to read. Endless, endless things to read.


Comments are visible to subscribers only. Log in or subscribe to join the conversation.

Tags

Loading...

Filter First Thoughts Posts

Related Articles