An Open Letter to Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J. April 15, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference Permit the suggestion, Your Eminence, that the Church’s pastors should avoid causing further confusion (and, indeed, whatever suffering is caused by those confusions) by helping God’s people embrace the mysteries of faith in love, rather than by suggesting that what has been settled by divine revelation and the authoritative teaching of the Church (in the 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) is not, in fact, settled.
Via Crucis, 2026 April 1, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference The Way of the Cross — and the third, seventh, and ninth stations in particular — has been an especially appropriate Lenten devotion this year. Every day, it seems, some new craziness erupts in the world, the country, or the Church. Every time we think we see rays of hope and possibility, we take another fall.
The Donatist comeback March 25, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference The strange, Donatist parallelism between the SSPX leadership and the German Synodal Path illustrates what’s come to be called the “horseshoe effect:” in a moment of cultural turbulence, social fragmentation, and political dysfunction like our own, the extremes of left and right bend toward each other rather than occupying two ends of a linear spectrum.
Three great Lenten themes March 18, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, Lent, The Catholic Difference Lent thus reminds us that salvation history does not consist in humanity’s search for God, but in God’s entrance into history so that humanity may learn to take the same path into the future that God is taking.
John Allen, nonpareil Vaticanista March 11, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, Journalism, The Catholic Difference John Allen was the best Anglophone Vaticanista ever, a man of great kindness who graciously helped everyone on that beat who had the sense to counsel with him.
Redemptor Hominis: more important than ever March 4, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference Today, in a global culture dominated by the notion that everything in the human condition is plastic, malleable, and changeable by acts of human will — the insistence that nothing is given — the question on which the future of Christian mission and service to the world depends is, “Who are we?” Are we simply congealed stardust, the happy but accidental byproduct of billions of years of random cosmic biochemical forces?
The myth vs. the historical record February 25, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference What John Paul observed to the General Council of the Polish episcopate in June 1979 — that Catholicism has effective weapons against tyranny when it is “strong with its own strength,” its spiritual strength — remains true today, not least with respect to Russia and China.
Remembering Angelo Gugel February 18, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference He was a quiet man who sought no attention and knew he was serving a saint. May he rest in peace, reunited with his old master at the Throne of Grace.
Might does not always make right, or even sense February 11, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference, War in Ukraine I do not agree with those who claim that Mr. Miller’s chest-thumping effectively gave Vladimir Putin carte blanche to conquer Ukraine (and Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states, and chunks of Poland and Norway), while giving the green light to Xi Jinping to ingest Taiwan.
Cardinal Dolan: By no means finished yet February 4, 2026By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference As of Feb. 6, he will not be archbishop of New York. But Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in good health and full of energy, is by no means at the end of his ministry or influence.
P.D. James and designer parkas for chihuahuas January 28, 2026By George Weigel Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference In the face of these unmistakable signs of cultural, even civilizational, decay, the Church has its work cut out for it.
The German bishops’ conference, over the cliff December 17, 2025By George Weigel Syndicated Columnist Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference It is tragic that this abandonment of theological sanity and pastoral responsibility coincides with the 60th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, in which German bishops and theologians (including the future Pope Benedict XVI) played significant roles.
