Catholic Studies publication

Respect for life is so fundamental to Catholic teaching that organizations—like the Girl Scouts—that advocate against life should be disqualified from sponsorship by a Catholic parish.

Republican candidates (at least these days) are good at proposing more liberty and less government, but from the libertarian Ron Paul to the more moderate Mitt Romney, they have failed to make any such appeal beyond the limited grounds of self-interest. That's a mistake.

Thirty-nine years after Roe v. Wade created an unrestricted abortion license in the United States, and during the week when hundreds of thousands of Americans pray and march for life, all Americans ought to ponder the kind of country to which Roe v. Wade led.

After his death, Václav Havel's brilliant literary deconstruction of the moral tawdriness of late bureaucratic communism, the underground essay called "The Power of the Powerless," was widely and appropriately quoted. Another Havel essay from his days in opposition also bears re-reading: "The Anatomy of a Reticence," the Czech playwright's 1985 critique of the willful blindness of western peace activists about the nature of Soviet totalitarianism.

The leadership of today's Girl Scouts is driven by a liberal ideology far out of step with the families and churches that support them. Should you support them?

There are as many reasons for "converting" as there are converts. If there is one common thread among them, it may just be the enticement of what Blessed John Paul II called the "symphony of truth."

The present Eisenhower Memorial design, by postmodernist Frank Gehry, is an aesthetic and historical travesty having virtually nothing to do with the Dwight David Eisenhower of history.

The introduction of the third edition of the Roman Missal and the new translations of the liturgical texts offer the entire English-speaking Church an opportunity to correct some bad liturgical habits that have developed over the past four decades.

What drives history over the long haul is culture: what men and women cherish, honor, and worship; what men and women are willing to stake their lives, and their children's lives, on. The truest realism, therefore, is one shaped by truths and ideals, not only by calculations of power.

Christmas faith inspires righteous living, not by fear, but by love: the love that expresses itself in history in the humility of the Incarnation and the Holy Birth; the love that speaks of the glory of God, "wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."

EPPC's Distinguished Senior Fellow, George Weigel, spoke with Fiona Basil of the Kairos Catholic Journal during a recent trip to Australia.

Václav Havel (1936-2011)