Category: The Catholic Difference

On
George Weigel

John XXIII and John Paul II: Canonizing the bookends

Pope Francis’ bold decisions to canonize Blessed John XXIII without the normal post-beatification miracle and to link good Pope John’s canonization ceremony to that of Blessed John Paul II just may help re-orient Catholic thinking about modern Catholic history.

For what Francis is suggesting, I think, is that John XXIII and John Paul II are the twin bookends of the Second Vatican Council — and thus should be canonized together.

Summoning an ecumenical council

On January 25, 1959, less than three months after his election, John XXIII surprised the Catholic world by announcing that he would summon the 21st ecumenical council in history.

Read More
On
George Weigel

The John Paul II difference: why the Revolution of 1989 was not a re-run of 1789

The Catholic Difference column by George WeigelTwenty-five years ago, on January 27, 1989, a joint statement from the communist government of Poland, the Solidarity trade union, and the Catholic Church announced a national “Roundtable” to discuss the country’s future, including major structural issues of political and economic reform.

The Roundtable began the following month; basic agreements were reached in April; partially-free elections, swept by Solidarity candidates, were held in June; and in September a Solidarity leader, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister since World War II.

Read More
On
George Weigel

Focused on the New Evangelization

The Catholic Difference column by George Weigel

There’s a lot for U.S. Catholics to be thankful for at Thanksgiving 2013: seminaries that have turned the corner from the doldrums of the immediate past and are now full, or getting close; a reform of the liturgical reform that is bringing a new sense of the sacred back to Catholic worship; a pope who’s put a new face on the Church while holding fast to the Church’s settled teaching; the finest multimedia exposition of Catholic faith ever produced, Father Robert Barron’s Catholicism series; strong leadership from our bishops in meeting challenges to religious freedom and moral reality; a burgeoning men’s movement that draws thousands to witness for Christ; a new feminism that rejects a unisex approach to life and that is robustly pro-life.

Read More
On
George Weigel

Church is being persecuted more than ever

The Catholic Difference column by George Weigel

Each issue of the admirable ecumenical journal, Touchstone, includes a department called “The Suffering Church.” It’s a title that Catholics of a certain age associate with purgatory; in Touchstone’s vocabulary, however, “the Church suffering” is the Church being purified here and now by persecution. It’s a useful reminder of a hard fact.

For that hard fact too rarely impinges on the Christian self-awareness, much less the Christian conscience, of the Church Comfortable, the Church Lax, or the Church of Nice — even though the historical commission created by John Paul II in preparation for the Great Jubilee of 2000 made clear that Christians today live in the greatest tribulation-time in Christian history.

Read More
On
George Weigel

On really not getting it

The Catholic Difference column by George Weigel

In the wake of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s homicide convictions this past May, several state legislatures began crafting laws that would protect unborn life at earlier stages of gestation while shutting down horror houses like Gosnell’s Philadelphia “clinic.”

Whether these laws will stand constitutional scrutiny remains to be seen; what is worth noting now is the degree to which deeply-entrenched supporters of the unrestricted abortion license created by the Supreme Court in 1973 still don’t get it — and still continue to muddle the public debate with their confusions.

Read More
On
George Weigel

Continuing to fight for marriage

The Catholic Difference column by George Weigel

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 when the court first struck down the key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and then denied standing to those challenging the judicial overturn of California’s “Proposition 8,” an initiative that restored the classic meaning of marriage to California law.

Read More
On
George Weigel

Celebrating moral courage: ‘42’ and us

The Catholic Difference column by George Weigel

Baseball and movies don’t often play well together. William Bendix as a Marine who dies happy in Guadalcanal Diary because he’s just heard that the Dodgers have won is an icon of 1940s Americana; the same William Bendix as the Bambino in The Babe Ruth Story is a sad business, to be consigned to the (bad) memory bank.

The Natural and Bull Durham have their moments, but when push comes to shove, they’re both, finally, about something other than baseball.

Read More
On
George Weigel

A reformed (and re-formed) College of Cardinals

The Catholic Difference column by George Weigel

The recent papal interregnum and conclave underscored the importance of re-forming, and reforming, the College of Cardinals.

As configured on February 28, 2013 (when Benedict XVI’s abdication took effect), the College was a somewhat strange electorate, albeit one that produced a striking result. Almost 20 percent of its members were retired. Only eight cardinal-electors were under 65 (and half of the youngsters were Americans — Cardinals Burke, DiNardo, Dolan, and Harvey).

Read More