George – Madison Catholic Herald

George Weigel’s latest book, Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II, is the third panel in a great triptych he has composed in honor of the most consequential Catholic figure of the second half of the 20th century.

While the first two books — Witness to Hope and The End and the Beginning — are marked by careful analysis and thousands of footnotes, this last volume is more personal, filled with anecdotes and stories about the author’s many encounters with John Paul over the years.

On March 23, 2017

George Weigel

On ‘owning’ the Church

The question of “who owns the Church” has had a stormy history in Catholic America, although the terms of reference have changed considerably over time.

In the 19th century, “lay trusteeism” — lay boards that owned parish property and sometimes claimed authority over the appointment and dismissal of pastors — was a major headache for the U.S. bishops.

Today, the question is more likely to arise from the wetlands of psychobabble; thus one Midwestern diocesan chancellor recently spoke about a diocesan “needs assessment” that “can give ownership to the people,” presumably of their lives as Catholics.

On November 30, 2016

George Weigel

Our need for the real Thomas More

Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the film, A Man for All Seasons.

And if it’s impossible to imagine such a picture on such a theme winning Oscars today, then let’s be grateful that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences got it right by giving Fred Zinnemann’s splendid movie six of its awards in 1967 — when, reputedly, Audrey Hepburn lifted her eyes to heaven before announcing with obvious pleasure that this cinematic celebration of the witness and martyrdom of Sir Thomas More had beaten The Sand Pebbles, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Alfie, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming for Best Picture.

On June 30, 2016

George Weigel

A cinematic lesson in hope

At a moment like this when there doesn’t seem to be a lot going right — ascendant authoritarianisms throughout the world; lethal violence by ideological fanatics; feckless responses to both from the democracies — it’s good to be reminded that things can be different, and in fact were different, not so very long ago.

Recapturing those days and summoning memories of a time when the good folks won, cleanly and against all the odds, is the singular accomplishment of a splendid new documentary, Liberating a Continent: John Paul II and the Fall of Communism, which should be on everyone’s summer must-watch list.

On May 19, 2016

Bishop Robert Barron

Daniel Berrigan and nonviolence

Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, passed away April 30 at the age of 94. Though many younger Catholics might not remember him, Father Berrigan was one of the most provocative and controversial religious figures of his time.

Standing in the tradition of principled non-violence proposed by Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and others, Berrigan led the charge against America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict and its on-going participation in the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.

He was most famous, of course, for his leadership of the “Catonsville Nine,” a group of protestors who, in the spring of 1968, broke into a building and burned draft records with homemade napalm. To say that he was, during that tumultuous time in American history, a polarizing figure would be an understatement.

On March 31, 2016

George Weigel

Easter is not a question mark

Excavating my desk recently, I found the program notes from a Tallis Scholars concert my wife and I had attended a few months ago.

The Tallis Scholars are a marvelous a capella ensemble, but most of their music that night was rather too minimalist for my tastes. In any event, the author of the program notes described Arvo Pärt’s I am the true vine and its “qualities of stasis and timelessness,” as reminiscent of what “former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has described as ‘silently waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark’.”

Changes in Harvard’s crest

Which put me in mind of an old joke that used to circulate in the editorial offices of First Things. Harvard University’s crest, it seems, used to read Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae [Truth for Christ and the Church].

Christ and the Church were jettisoned over a hundred years ago; the crest now reads, simply, Veritas.

On February 17, 2016

George Weigel

ISIS, genocide, and us: West should respond

The Monuments Men was a disappointing movie, but one of its most chilling scenes sticks in my mind as an analogue to the appalling wickedness underway in the Middle East.

In the film, SS Colonel Wegner supervises the destruction of art works plundered by the Nazis: treasures intended for Hitler’s fantasized Fuehrer Museum in Linz, Austria.

Destroying paintings

But as the Allies close in on Germany in 1945, Hitler decides that, if he and his goons can’t have these masterpieces, their rightful owners — and the future — won’t have them, either.

On December 9, 2015

George Weigel

Synod-2015 revisited

As I write, just before Thanksgiving, it’s been over a month since Synod-2015 finished its work.

Yet there is still no official translation of the synod’s Final Report into the major world languages from the original Italian (a language regularly used by eight-tenths of one percent of the world’s population).

That’s a shame because, in the main, the Relatio Finalis is an impressive, often-moving statement of the Church’s convictions about chastity, marriage, and the family: biblically rich, theologically serious, pastorally sensitive, and well-crafted to meet the challenge of the cultural tsunami responsible for the contemporary crisis of marriage and the family, which has left a lot of unhappiness in its wake.

On October 8, 2015

George Weigel

Issues beneath issues at synod 2015

Editor’s note: George Weigel is in Rome reporting on the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family.

Since Pope Francis announced that two synods would examine the contemporary crisis of marriage and the family and work to devise more evangelically dynamic responses to that crisis, a lot of attention has focused on issues of Catholic discipline.

How does the Church determine that a marriage never existed and thus grant a decree of nullity? What is to be done about the sacramental situation of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics? How does the Church best prepare its sons and daughters for marriage?

On May 21, 2015

Fr. Robert Barron

Cardinal George and Catholicism

Fourth and last in a series of reflections by Fr. Robert Barron on the life of Cardinal Francis George.

The other principal sign of the exhaustion of the liberal project is its hyper-stress on freedom as self-assertion and self-definition.

In Cardinal Francis George’s words, “The cultural fault line lies in a willingness to sacrifice even the Gospel truth in order to safeguard personal freedom construed as choice.”