george weigel

Breaking Bad Liturgical Habits

by George Weigel November 25, 2011

The long-awaited introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal on November 27, the First Sunday of Advent, offers the Church in the Anglosphere an opportunity to reflect on the riches of the liturgy, its biblical vocabulary, and its…

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Why Can’t the Roman Curia Be a Type of UN?

by George Weigel November 22, 2011

Although he’s not very well known in the U.S., save among members of the Sant’Egidio community (of which he’s the founding father), Andrea Riccardi is a major figure in the Catholic Church in Italy: a historian of the papacy, a…

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Remembering Bill Doherty

by George Weigel November 18, 2011

In December 1980, I spent several hours talking with Mike Hammer, a field representative in El Salvador of the American Institute for Free Labor Development. AIFLD, an overseas development affiliate of the AFL-CIO, was trying to bring some sense into…

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Benedict, the Wall Street Occupier

by George Weigel November 14, 2011

It’s been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled “progressive” Catholics.
First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish Pope was a hero all over the world…

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Put the Blame Where It Belongs

by George Weigel November 1, 2011

The Evangelical Church in Germany is a theological muddle, being a federation of Lutheran, Prussian Union, and Reformed (or Calvinist) Protestant communities. Still, it must have been a moving moment when the Council of this federation met with Pope Benedict…

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Decadence and Democracy

by George Weigel October 21, 2011

Two volumes recently published by Encounter Books address key issues in the New Evangelization.
The first, Marcello Pera’s Why We Must Call Ourselves Christians, is another effort by a distinguished public intellectual to call our civilization back to its foundational…

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Broncos QB Tackled by Christophobia

by George Weigel October 14, 2011

Two weeks into the NFL season, ESPN ran a Sunday morning special exploring why the third-string quarterback of the Denver Broncos, Tim Tebow, had become the most polarizing figure in American sports—more polarizing than trash-talking NBA behemoths; more polarizing than…

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The Overlooked 9/12 Anniversary

by George Weigel October 7, 2011

In the flood of commentary surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I found but one reference to a related anniversary of considerable importance: the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture. That lecture, given the day after the fifth…

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Benedict Tells It Like It Is

by George Weigel October 4, 2011

Americans exhausted by adolescent chants of “Pass this bill!” and the rest of the rhetorical detritus of the 2012 pre-campaign might go to the Vatican website, click on Pope Benedict XVI, and spend a half-hour reading through the texts of…

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This Is No Catholic Lite

by George Weigel September 26, 2011

In the fall of 1972, a group of us, philosophy majors all, approached our dean of studies, Father Bob Evers, with a request: Under the supervision of a faculty member, could we build a two-credit senior seminar in our last…

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