George Weigel

Copyright (c) 1998 First Things 80 (February 1998): 19-25. That no good deed goes unpunished is nicely illustrated by the terms in which several biographers have recognized Pope John Paul II as a seminal figure in the Revolution of 1989. Thus Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, in their 1996 book, His . . . . Continue Reading »

”His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time By Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi Doubleday, 582 pages, $27.50 On October 21, 1978, five days after the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II, the “liberal” Polish Communist journal Polityka opined . . . . Continue Reading »

History of Vatican II Volume I: Announcing and Preparing Vatican Council II-Toward a New Era in Catholicism Edited by Giuseppe Alberigo English edition edited by Joseph A. Komonchak Orbis/Peeters, 527 pages, $80 In his November 1994 apostolic letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente , John Paul II . . . . Continue Reading »

Mencken: A Life . By Fred Hobson.Random House. 650 pp. $35. H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor. Edited with an introduction by Jonathan Yardley. Knopf. 450 pp. $30. H. L. Mencken, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work . Edited by Fred Hobson, vincent Fitzpatrick, and Bradford Jacobs. Johns . . . . Continue Reading »

Gargantuan international conferences replete with diplomats, "international civil servants," various "nongovernmental organization" (NGO) representatives, and the world press have been a staple feature of world politics since the Second World War. One does not fear sinning . . . . Continue Reading »

George Lindbeck, the distinguished Lutheran theologian, served from 1962 through 1965 as one of sixty “Delegated Observers” from other Christian communions at the Second Vatican Council. As Lindbeck has noted on previous occasions, the ecumenical observers from the worlds of Orthodoxy and . . . . Continue Reading »

According to a bit of street wisdom that has worked its way into the national vocabulary, “You got to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.” But since the opposite of everything is frequently, if not always, true, we might, on the matter of explicitly Christian rhetoric and the American public . . . . Continue Reading »

God’s Politician: Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church, and the New World Order by David Willey St. Martin’s, 258 pages, $18.95 Fifteen years ago, as the long pontificate of Paul VI drew to a close, a consensus on the qualifications for the next pope began to take shape among liberal . . . . Continue Reading »

Moral theologians have long disputed the point at which a child reaches the “age of reason.” But surely, in these United States, the answer is clear: one reaches the “age of reason” when one can read the box scores (the baseball box scores, of course) in the morning paper. . . . . Continue Reading »

Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903–1939 by Martin Stannard Norton (1987), 537 pages, $10.95 paper Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939–1966 by Martin Stannard Norton (1992), 512 pages, $25.95 cloth Many great novelists have had intricate, even prickly, personalities. But in Evelyn Waugh, . . . . Continue Reading »