The Solidarity Difference
Thirty years ago, on August 31, 1980, an electrician named Lech Walesa signed the Gdansk Accords, ending a two-week-old strike at that Hanseatic city's Lenin Shipyards. Walesa signed with a
Surrounded by Martyrs
CRACOW. A lot has changed over the twenty years I’ve been coming to this beautiful city. The grayness and disrepair that were by-products of communism have been replaced by architectural
What JFK Wrought at Houston
Sandro Magister's “Chiesa” [Church] newsletter (available at http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it) is an indispensable resource for anyone seriously following the major debates within the Catholic Church, the ideas shaping the pontificate of Benedict
Money, Scandal, and Rome
It was virtually inevitable that the media firestorm over Benedict XVI’s handling of sexually abusive clerics — even if the insinuations against the Pope were unsubstantiated and unfair — would
The Limits of the Papacy
During the preparation of the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Pope Paul VI proposed that the constitution’s discussion of papal primacy include the affirmation that the Pope
Spreading the Big Lie
If Irish singer Sinead O’Connor wishes to denounce her mother publicly as an abusive parent, that is her privilege. If Ms. O’Connor wishes to shred a photograph of John Paul
Advice for Europe – And For Us
At an international symposium in honor of the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, held in Paris on February 11, I offered closing remarks on what the Church might do to combat
The Weakland Memoirs
In A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop [Eerdmans], Archbishop Rembert Weakland, O.S.B., offers an account of, and an apologia for, his dramatic life. One reader,
Freedom, Sanctity, and the Future
CRACOW. We’ve been doing this for seventeen years now, my colleagues and I — running an intensive, three-week, Cracow-based immersion course in Catholic social doctrine, centered on John Paul II’s
Benedict XVI and the Truth About Charity
Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), is a complex and occasionally obscure document, replete with possible implications for the future development of Catholic social doctrine.
"Caritas in Veritate" in Gold and Red
In the often unpredictable world of the Vatican, it was as certain as anything could be in mid-1990 that there would be a 1991 papal encyclical to commemorate the centenary
President Reagan and John Paul II
They were two of the giant figures of the last half of the twentieth century — Ronald Reagan and John Paul II — and they had many things in common.
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