May 14, 2024
The Ethics and Public Policy Center is pleased to announce that Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel, who holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, was invested with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by President Andrzej Duda at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on May 13.
I thank you, Mr. President, and through you, I thank the people of the Republic of Poland for this great honor. Poland and its people have been a significant part of my life for over thirty years, and whatever I have managed to give Poland has been modest compensation for what Poland has given me.
Father Józef Tischner once said that Poland in the 1980s was a “great forest planted by aroused consciences.” Those aroused consciences, inspired by Pope John Paul II and determined to “live in the truth,” gave Poland, and indeed all of central Europe, a new birth of freedom. And all of us in the West remain in your debt for that.
If I may borrow from Father Tischner’s image, the entire West world today needs “reforestation:” the West needs aroused consciences, living in the truth, especially the truth about the dignity of the human person, about which John Paul II taught us so much, and of which he gave such a magnificent example.
My prayer and hope is that Polonia Semper Fidelis will lead the West in such a “reforestation.” And of course I hope that the United States of America will be in partnership with Poland in that enterprise.
Thank you again.
