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Suddenly here was this somewhat roly-poly elderly, northern Italian peasant on the chair of Saint Peter and he was accessible - and he made himself accessible, he went to prisons, he went to hospitals, he went to the shrine of Loreto.

George Weigel

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George Weigel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: April 17
Author
Political Scientist
Theologian
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Peter
Peasants
Saint
Elderly
Suddenly
Accessible
Poly
Prison
Chair
Shrine
Went
Somewhat
Shrines
Made
Hospitals
Peasant
Chairs
Prisons
Italian
Northern

More quotes by George Weigel

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[Pope Francis] has felt the mercy of God in his own life and wants to share that experience with others.
George Weigel
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Freedom that lacks moral truth becomes its own worst enemy.
George Weigel
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Ideas have consequences and bad ideas can have lethal consequences.
George Weigel
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The most enduring of the false narratives is that the signature phrase of the early pontificate - Who am I to judge? - was a matter of the pope jettisoning millennia of Catholic moral teaching. It was not. It was a specific response to the circumstances of a man who had repented and was trying to live an upright life.
George Weigel
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In the Catholic view of things, abortion is a justice issue, not an issue of sexual morality... it is a civil rights issue, arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.
George Weigel
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The Church offers the medicine of the divine mercy so that healed souls can grasp the truth that will liberate them in the fullest meaning of human freedom.
George Weigel
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What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life.
George Weigel
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[When the Gospel seems to be interpreted in different ways] is the obvious challenge, perhaps even danger, here. By its very nature as a custodial office, the papacy can't be a Rorschach test, into which people read whatever they like - whatever they fear or hope for.
George Weigel
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The Guardian,[is] one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world.
George Weigel
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We're used to institutional-maintenance Catholicism, in which the institution ticks along by its own inertia and people are born into the Church. Francis knows that is over and done with: Kept Catholicism, whether kept by legal establishment or by cultural habit, has no future.
George Weigel
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Vital parishes built on the Bible and the sacraments, committed to evangelizing their neighborhoods, will continue to flourish. The poor will be served, the sick healed, and the dying comforted. None of that is going to change, and I'd wager that it's going to get better.
George Weigel
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The emphasis on the peripheries is also a distinctively Franciscan way of expressing the pope's respect for untutored popular piety - a respect, I might add, that was shared by St. John Paul II.
George Weigel
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You don't believe what you read in the papers about anything else why do you believe it about the pope? That's where I'd start.
George Weigel
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Be the Church - that is, be an evangelical movement that tells the world of God's passionate love for humanity. That, not institutional maintenance, is what the Church is for. When the Church is that, and does that, it flourishes.
George Weigel
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The job now is to institutionalize all of that [Vatican finances], and I wouldn't bet against Cardinal [George] Pell, who hasn't shied away from contact sports since his days as an Australian-rules football star.
George Weigel
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[Jesus Christ to Pope Francis] is the Lord with whom he speaks for hours every day in prayer. The Risen One who reached out, touched his life, and called him into mission.
George Weigel
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Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics, of how you look at things, and that can change from day to day, or with a new prescription for your glasses - or with a new set of ideological filters.
George Weigel
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In the Church the transformative power of the Eucharist is experienced through the dignified celebration of Holy Mass, and people are empowered for mission because of that.
George Weigel
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Younger theologians will continue to pursue and understand truth rather than deconstructing it, as a lot of their elders seemed to want to do.
George Weigel
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The most important appointment Pope Francis has made is the appointment of the Australian cardinal, George Pell, as the Vatican's financial overseer.
George Weigel