In his 2008 World Day of Peace address, Pope Benedict XVI made clear that human beings “are of supreme worth vis-Ã -vis creation as a whole.” He explained that respecting the environment does not mean considering “material or animal nature more important than man.” According to some early accounts, this amounted to a “surprise attack” on … Read more
A few days ago, Osama bin Laden released a message threatening Benedict XVI for leading a “new Crusade” against Islam. Whether he meant to or not, the Holy Father issued a ringing answer to the architect of 9/11 by receiving into the Church Europe’s most vocal Muslim critic of bin Laden and Islamic terrorism. Magdi … Read more
Last week, media agencies around the world took an interview with Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti to mean that the Vatican had revised the seven classic deadly sins and added seven new deadly sins to the list. In particular, they focused on “pollution” as one of the new sins that the archbishop was apparently promulgating for the … Read more
Jesuit spokesmen, both official and unofficial, rallied promptly — and properly — in support of their newly elected superior general, Rev. Adolfo Nicolas, S.J., calling him a holy and highly intelligent man and a natural choice for his new job. What they neglected to say, on the record at least, is that Pope Benedict XVI’s … Read more
On Tuesday, a group of Catholics in Washington, D.C. issued a statement calling for a greater “spirit of civility” as Americans approach the 2008 presidential elections. When I saw the title of the statement — “A Catholic Call to Civility in Public Debate” — I thought, what a great idea! Then I read it, and … Read more
It has been one year since Pope Benedict XVI’s ill-starred Regensburg Address. We say “ill-starred” because the media fixated on a side comment the pope made about Islam, apparently to clinch a depiction of the pope as intolerant. In the process, they obscured the luminous center of the pope’s speech, the relationship of science and … Read more
It has been said that while writing the Summa, Saint Thomas Aquinas was, among other things, engaging in a dialogue with Saint Augustine across the cenÂturies. In his extraordinary Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI also seems to regard, in his mind’s eye, a number of interlocutors, living and dead.    It has … Read more
The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but … Read more