Publications

I too have been amazed at the astonishing pace of historical change over the past decade; and I agree that…

As richly textured human and historical realities, “centuries” do not always follow the conventions of our system of dating. The…

Were the NCCB to make a powerful moral argument on behalf of responsible internationalism, linking the defense of the “national…

With the end of the Cold War, humankind seemed poised to take what Pope John Paul II proposed in 1981:…

1. David Hollenbach, S.J., “Ethical Principles, Strategic Policy, and the Catholic Bishops: The Continuing Argument,” a paper delivered at the…

The European monetary system is breaking down for the same reason the gold-exchange standard in 1931 and the Bretton Woods…

In this provocative collection nine distinguished observers give their assessments of what the Religious New Right has achieved and what its potential is for the rest of this decade. Historian George Marsden of Notre Dame, sociologist Robert Wuthnow of Princeton, and political scientists Robert Booth Fowler of the University of Wisconsin and Corwin Smidt of Calvin College ponder its past and future from their varying perspectives. Five other scholars—James L. Guth, Carl F. H. Henry, James Davison Hunter, Grant Wacker, and George Weigel—offer challenging responses, and nine prominent activists and experts add insightful comments.

The collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe–the Revolution of 1989–was a singularly stunning event in a century already known for the unexpected. How did people divided for two generations by an Iron Curtain come so suddenly to dance together atop the Berlin Wall? Why did people who had once seemed resigned to their fate suddenly take their future into their hands? Some analysts have explained the Revolution in economic terms, arguing that the Warsaw Part countries could no longer compete with the West. But as George Weigel argues in this thought-provoking volume, people don’t put their lives, and their children’s future, in harm’s way simply for better cars, refrigerators, and TVs. Something else–something more–had to happen behind the Iron Curtain before the Wall came tumbling down.

My task is to serve as a springboard for discussion of the economic thought of John Paul II. Even apart…

President George Bush said yes; some bishops said no; even Doonesbury touched on the question. But what does is mean, in any case, to say that a war is just?  What are the yard-sticks of justice that support President Bush’s claim that is was just to reverse Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait?  And how does on evaluate the justness of stopping the war when the allies did?  And what of our fierce bombing of the fleeting Iraqi troops on the road from Kuwait?  The threat to Israel?  The value of oil in weighing whether to fight or not?

Government reports of dropping GNP confirm what most forecasters a year ago said wouldn’t happen: a mild recession.  Ignoring the…

In his highly controversial 1988 book Peace and Revolution, political scientist Guenter Lewy charged that since the Vietnam era the four major American pacifist organizations—American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters League, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—have moved from singleminded devotion to the principles of non-violence and reconciliation to a defense of “the moral legitimacy of armed struggle and guerrilla warfare.” This provocative collection begins with a summary of Lewy’s argument. Then fifteen respondents—pacifists and non-pacifists—join the discussion. Some decry Lewy’s account as prejudiced and incomplete; others applaud it as a long overdue exposure of the subversion of a noble purpose. In a final chapter, Lewy replies to his critics.