Catholic Studies publication

George Weigel talks with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about Pope Francis’s first two years and the future of the Catholic Church around the world.

Will the Church be allowed to staff its schools with teachers who teach and live what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, hiring those who meet those criteria and declining to employ those who don’t? Or will the state try to coerce Catholic schools to employ teaching staff according to other criteria?

Francis’s papacy has put a fresh face on Catholicism and opened up new vistas for the Church’s mission.

Vladimir Putin is best understood as a Russian-based global Mafia don who has refined the Vito Corleone model with a Leninist political methodology, enhanced by the new propaganda methods of social media and by classic appeals to a stern form of Russian nationalism.

Lent—the Christian walk to Jerusalem with the Lord who meets his destiny there in complete submission to the Father’s will—is an annual reminder that God is God and we aren’t.

Some of the data about the spread of global Christianity are encouraging; others are discouraging; many of them are important for grasping the nature of this particular moment in Christian history.

The kind of nonviolent revolution in favor of a democratic future that would have been celebrated and defended in 1989 has been betrayed, in slow motion, even as the Ukrainian revolution’s leaders have continued to plead for Western help.

The considerable public confusion about the situation in Ukraine is a reflection of the success of the extraordinary Russian disinformation campaign that’s been underway for the past fifteen months.

Marriage looks risky to young couples, so finding the success factor matters a lot.

To walk the Lenten journey day by day is to experience the fullness of what it means to meet the Lamb of God.

The chief purpose of the Vatican’s bilateral diplomacy is to secure the freedom of the Catholic Church to be itself in the countries with which the Holy See has, or wishes to have, diplomatic relations.

The vacuum in what was once the Christian culture of Western Europe has been filled by a kind of nihilism that allows jihadism to flourish.