George Weigel

Sunday, March 20 It’s not quite Egeria’s Diary of a Pilgrimage, but Evelyn Waugh’s Helena is terrific reading, or rereading, on an overnight flight to the Holy Land: a resolutely gritty, profoundly anti-Gnostic rendering of Constantine’s mother and her search for the true Cross, which, on . . . . Continue Reading »

As Time and other premillennial makers“of“lists have discovered in recent months, there is no lack of candidates for the position of emblematic figure of the twentieth century. In the world of politics alone, there are several plausible nominees on a slate that includes the admirable . . . . Continue Reading »

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 »