George Weigel

At Thanksgiving 2021, America should rediscover hope in its heart. Doing so is not fantasy, nor is it something unnatural to us as a people. A hopeful heart is a truly American heart.

Catholics dubious about what they read in the press on virtually every other matter ought not take the bait cast by media outlets and think that the bishops ducked the “abortion issue” when crunch-time came.

Catholics who take the texts of Vatican II seriously refuse to truckle to, and in fact resist, those cultural aggressors who think of human beings as mere twitching bundles of morally-equal desires, the fulfillment of which exhausts the meaning of “human rights.”

As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops prepares to meet in Baltimore, misconceptions about a proposed conference statement on the eucharistic vitality and integrity of the Church in America abound.

John Paul II became the most politically consequential pope since the High Middle Ages not by playing the political game by the world’s rules, but by being a witness to Christ and to the truths about humanity learned from the incarnate Son of God who embodies them in a unique way.

The American tradition of free cooperative action for the common good, which so impressed Alexis de Tocqueville when he wrote Democracy in America 160 years earlier, was alive on United 93 between 9:30 and 10 a.m. on 9/11.

To receive the Eucharist is more than an expression of personal piety. It is a statement of one’s full communion with the Church. Making that clear, by instruction if possible and disciplinary action if necessary, is a pastoral obligation.

The best of Catholic liberal arts education prepares students for any intellectual or professional endeavor—and does so in a far healthier environment than so-called “prestige schools.”

The late Bill Freehan of the Detroit Tigers was a Catholic gentleman and a great ballplayer, and an exemplar of the kind of professional athlete to whom parents once directed their children as a role model. 

The ongoing Roman celebration of the Ostpolitik of the 1960s and 1970s as a triumph for Vatican diplomacy and a model for the future is sheer mythmaking—and damaging mythmaking at that.

The correct answer to the question of when human life begins is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of scientific fact.

It’s a safe bet that “Mother Mary Lange” is not a household name in most U.S. Catholic circles. That unhappy state of affairs may change, though, thanks to a courageous initiative now underway in Baltimore, one of America’s most troubled cities.