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What Ukraine Means
On February 24, 2022, something considered so unlikely in the twenty-first century as to be almost unimaginable happened: A large European state mounted a full-scale, full-spectrum invasion of another large

The Pope We All Need:
The Papacy and the Crisis of the West
The 20th Annual Simon Lecture

St. John Paul II: A Centenary Reflection
This essay is an adaption of Mr. Weigel’s nineteenth annual William E. Simon Lecture, delivered on March 10 in Washington, D.C., and draws on material from his Foreword to Teachings

Saint John Paul II: A Centenary Reflection on a Life of Consequence
The 19th Annual Simon Lecture

This Catholic Moment: Today’s Crisis in Historical Context
The 18th Annual Simon Lecture

Democracy and Its Discontents
This essay is adapted from George Weigel’s 17th William E. Simon Lecture, delivered in Washington on March 6, 2018. Click here to listen to an audio recording of the lecture.

2015 Simon Lecture: Lessons in Statecraft
This article is adapted from the fourteenth annual William E. Simon Lecture, delivered on February 4, 2015. When the Catholic Church celebrated the canonizations of John Paul II and Pope John

The Great War Revisited
This article is adapted from the thirteenth annual William E. Simon Lecture, delivered on February 6, 2014. In 1936, the British writer Rebecca West stood on the balcony of Sarajevo’s

Reality and Public Policy
This essay is adapted from the 12th William E. Simon Lecture, delivered in Washington D.C. on February 5, 2013. The glossary of inadmissible words in 21st-century American society has shrunk

The Handwriting on the Wall
A version of this essay was delivered as the 11th Annual William E. Simon Lecture in Washington on February 7, 2012. In recent years, roiled as they have been by

The Next Pope–and Why He Matters to All of Us
[This article was originally delivered as EPPC’s Fourth Annual William E. Simon Lecture on January 12, 2005. It will be printed in the Spring 2005 issue of Notre Dame Magazine, and is

Moral Clarity in a Time of War
This article was adapted from the second William E. Simon Lecture In Book Three of Tolstoy’s epic, War and Peace, the hero, Pierre Bezukhov, arrives at the battlefield of Borodino