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 … Continue Reading »

Dr. Thomas Farr of Georgetown’s Berkley Center is one of the true Good Guys on the Washington scene. His June 13 testimony before the National Security Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was a thoughtful, sobering reflection on the failures of U.S. international religious freedom policy… . Continue Reading »

Criticism comes with the territory when one writes books, and the best any author can hope for is intelligent criticism that engages one’s argument and leads to new insight all around… . Continue Reading »

Responses from right-minded marriage proponents to the Supreme Court’s June 26 decisions in two cases involving the (re)definition of marriage seemed to come in three waves. The immediate reaction, influenced no doubt by a partisan press, was that the friends of marriage had suffered a severe, and perhaps lethal, blow … Continue Reading »

Let me begin by paying Father Andrew Greeley, who died this past May 29, a compliment he’d never have paid me, or indeed anyone of my “location” in the Church: Catholicism was duller after Greeley was felled by an accident in 2008, and the Church feels emptier since his death… . Continue Reading »

The “Edict of Milan,” whose milleseptuacentennial (so to speak) is being marked this year, wasn’t an edict and wasn’t issued at Milan. Still, its enormous impact on the history of the Church and the West is well worth pondering on this 1,700th anniversary. In his magisterial study, The First Thousand Years, Robert Louis Wilken sets the historical record straight … Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago I came upon the odd fact that, before and during World War II, the Royal Navy built battleships with fourteen-inch main battery guns, whereas Britain’s principal naval rivals, Germany and Japan, were building ships with fifteen- and eighteen-inch main batteries; moreover, the RN’s chief ally, the United States, had been building battleships mounting sixteen-inch guns for decades… . Continue Reading »

When he was elected as Paul VI just fifty years ago, Giovanni Battista Montini seemed the perfectly prepared pope. He was the son of a middle-class family of Italian professionals with good Vatican ties. A competent linguist who had enjoyed a distinguished career in the Holy See’s diplomatic service, he was also a man of pastoral sensibilities … Continue Reading »

In the course of preparing The End and the Beginning, the second volume of my biography of John Paul II, I was struck by a historical coincidence that isn’t much remarked these days: The opening of the Second Vatican Council in October 1962 coincided almost precisely with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pope John XXIII solemnly opened the council on October 11 … Continue Reading »

Despite his humble origins as a baker’s son from Trastevere, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, longtime curial head of the Holy Office (“successor to the Inquisition,” in journalese) and scourge of the nouvelle théologie of the 1950s, was a formidable figure in pre-conciliar Catholicism. Ottaviani’s approach to theology was neatly summarized in the Latin motto of his cardinalatial coat of arms, Semper Idem [Always the Same] … Continue Reading »