Last week was a momentous one for the European project. On Monday, the Greek Parliament passed an austerity package that other Eurozone members, especially Germany, had demanded as a condition for considering Greece’s request for an €86 bailout. Negotiations will now begin. How they will end is . . . . Continue Reading »
The 21st-century Church owes a lot to 20th-century German Catholicism: for its generosity to Catholics in the Third World; for the witness of martyrs like Alfred Delp, Bernhard Lichtenberg, and Edith Stein; for its contributions to Biblical studies, systematic and moral theology, liturgical renewal, and Catholic social doctrine, through which German Catholicism played a leading role in Vatican II’s efforts to renew Catholic witness for the third millennium. At the Council, more than the Rhine flowed into the Tiber; let’s not forget the Seine, the Meuse, the Potomac, and the Vistula. But the Rhine’s flow was strong. Continue Reading »
On Thursday, September 4th, Wolfhart Pannenberg, the greatest theological mind of German Protestantism in the second half of the 20th century, breathed his last. May he find rest in the peace of God. Continue Reading »
Today Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande met at Reims Cathedral, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle meeting there as a gesture of Franco-German reconciliation this day in 1962. For German and French eyes, a significant moment, full of momentous symbolism, . . . . Continue Reading »
. . . even if, like Germany’s Gerhard Schröder, German Chancellor from 1998-2005, you are of the general social democrat mode, you rely on centralized government action too much, and you are not above stoking rabid denunciation of U.S. efforts to fight terrorism and WMD proliferation for . . . . Continue Reading »
Ampontan has some nice juxtapositions, jumping off Victor Davis Hanson among others, highlighting the culture-and-mores-rooted FACT that Greece, Southern Italy, Detroit, and urban Britain are simply more difficult and troublesome places to live than Germany, Northern Italy, Switzerland, and of . . . . Continue Reading »
A great many Americans, especially those of a certain age, cannot hear the German language being spoken—by anyone under any conditions—without instantly bringing to mind Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust. It’s not willed; it’s simply . . . . Continue Reading »
Germany's communist past is hard to . . . . Continue Reading »
The Jesuits and the Third Reich by vincent a. lapomarda, s. j. the edwin mellen press, 375 pages, $39.95 At the beginning of this valuable study, Vincent A. Lapomarda, who is Curator of the Hiatt Collection of Holocaust Materials at Holy Cross College, allows that Catholics have not recounted . . . . Continue Reading »
It is hard to imagine a Jew today who would come to Germany without a profound sense of uneasiness. Considering the agony of the Jewish people at the hands of the Germans from 1933 to 1945, one can well understand the attitude of many Jews today—even forty-five years after the Nazi horror has . . . . Continue Reading »
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