This evening I attended a talk at the university given by someone I went to college with nearly 40 years ago. George Weigel has become a hero to some and a target for others. He is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C. He has authored 19 books, including a biography of Pope John Paul II, "A Witness to Hope", and most recently "Faith, Reason and the War against Jihadism."
The title of his talk tonight was "In God's Name: Religion and World Politics in the 21st Century." George says it like it is. He pulls no punches and says the truth in a way that either warms the cockles of the conservative heart or enrages those who are stuck in a time warp of kowtowing to political correctness.
In his talk he explains how the much torpedoed talk of Pope Benedict XVI at Regensburg University (9/12/06) was exactly what the world needs to hear: the key issue of our time is that either being rational will win the day, or being irrational will undermine the very fabric of social order in our world. If his book is half as good as his talk, then we'd all be in for a treat; no, more than a treat, we'd be in for a systematic understanding of what is going on in the central intellectual battle of our time.
Comments