George Weigel

Although he’s not very well known in the U.S., save among members of the Sant’Egidio community (of which he’s the founding father), Andrea Riccardi is a major figure in the Catholic Church in Italy: a historian of the papacy, a commentator on all things Catholic, and a player in various ecclesiastical dramas. Most recently, according to Vatican reporter Sandro Magister, Riccardi has taken to defending the Italian character of the Roman Curia, which, after a period of internationalization, has become more pronounced over the past decade… . Continue Reading »

The long-awaited introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal on Nov. 27, the first Sunday of Advent, offers the Church in the Anglophere an opportunity to reflect on the riches of the liturgy, its biblical vocabulary, and its virtually inexhaustible storehouse of images. Much of that vocabulary, and a great many of those images, were lost under the “dynamic equivalence” theory of translation; they have now been restored under the “formal equivalence” method of translating. Over the next years and decades, the Catholic Church will be reminded of just what a treasure-house of wonders the liturgy is… . Continue Reading »

The Oct. 11 sentencing of former prime minister and Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in prison may or may not stand. Miss Tymoshenko has appealed the sentence and several western governments, including the Obama administration, have lodged stiff protests over Tymoshenko’s prosecution with the government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich. But irrespective of Miss Tymoshenko’s legal fate, a marker has been laid down… . Continue Reading »

The Evangelical Church in Germany is a theological muddle, being a federation of Lutheran, Prussian Union, and Reformed (or Calvinist) Protestant communities. Still, it must have been a moving moment when the Council of this federation met with Pope Benedict XVI last month in the chapter hall of the former Augustinian priory at Erfurt: the place where Martin Luther had studied theology, had been ordained a priest, and had, as the Pope put it, thought with “deep passion” about one great question: “How do I receive the grace of God?” … Continue Reading »

Two volumes recently published by Encounter Books address key issues in the New Evangelization. The first, Marcello Pera’s Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians, is another effort by a distinguished public intellectual to call our civilization back to its foundational senses. Pera, a philosopher of science, is also an Italian legislator who served for several years as president of the Italian Senate… . Continue Reading »

Two weeks into the NFL season, ESPN ran a Sunday morning special exploring why the third-string quarterback of the Denver Broncos, Tim Tebow, had become the most polarizing figure in American sports”more polarizing than trash-talking NBA behemoths; more polarizing than foul-mouthed Serena Williams; more polarizing than NFL all-stars who father numerous children by numerous women, all out of wedlock. Why does Tebow, and Tebow alone, arouse such passions? Why is Tebow the one whom “comedians” say they would like to shoot? … Continue Reading »

In the flood of commentary surrounding the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I found but one reference to a related anniversary of considerable importance: the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture. That lecture, given the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at the pope’s old university in Germany, identified the two key challenges to 21st-century Islam, if that faith of over a billion people is going to live within today’s world in something other than a condition of war… . Continue Reading »

In the fall of 1972, a group of us, philosophy majors all, approached our dean of studies, Father Bob Evers, with a request: Under the supervision of a faculty member, could we build a two-credit senior seminar in our last college semester around Kenneth Clark’s BBC series, “Civilization,” which had been shown on American public television. Father Evers agreed, and we had a ball… . Continue Reading »

Almost 40 years ago, an aging Anglican clergyman told me a story about his first trip to Paris as a boy”perhaps in the 1920s. His grandfather had called him in, told him that he had a gift to be used in the French capital, and then gave my friend a small pocket mirror. The boy, puzzled, asked his grandfather what the mirror might be for. The following dialogue ensued … Continue Reading »

One of the (many) signs of our cultural decline is that verbal insults, these days, are almost invariably scatological or sexual, provoking a blizzard of asterisks whenever A wants to put the smackdown on B. Once upon a time, it was not so. Once, the ability to come up with a clever insult that could be repeated in polite society was thought an important, if not necessarily essential, component of being a gentleman… . Continue Reading »