George Weigel
I hope ["reanimated the papacy"] means that the new interest in the pope evokes a new interest in the Church's teaching, of which the pope is the custodian.Collection: Teaching
I'd also hope that my liberal friends, who find in this pope a critic of what they're pleased to call "culture-warrior" Catholics, will read carefully, and ponder even more carefully, what Pope Francis had to say about the "ideological colonization" implicit in Western decadence when he was giving robust pro-life, pro-family talks in the Philippines.Collection: Warrior
[Pope Francis] is 78 years old and knows that his will be a short pontificate.Collection: Years
The impact remains to be seen; I don't think we can measure the enduring impact of John Paul II, for example, for another hundred, perhaps two hundred, years.Collection: Thinking
The short-term impact is that people are encouraged to give the Church another look. It's up to the liveliest parts of the Church - the dynamically orthodox parts of the Church - to seize that opportunity.Collection: Opportunity
[Pope] Francis ought to be taken at his word when he says, as he has often done, that he is a son of the Church who believes and teaches what the Catholic Church believes and teaches.Collection: Believe
[Pope Francis]sees a world in need of the Gospel, and of friendship with Jesus Christ, as an antidote to the self-absorption and loneliness that are eating away at the solidarity of the human community.Collection: Jesus
[Pope Francis] has felt the mercy of God in his own life and wants to share that experience with others.Collection: Mercy Of God
No one who reads and reveres the New Testament should doubt for a second that the pious poor and marginalized have something to teach all of us - including German theologian-bishops - about the truth of the Gospel and the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.Collection: Doubt
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.Collection: Sports
If [Pope's Francis] media-generated popularity, fragile as that may turn out to be when the world discovers that the pope is really a Catholic, opens windows of possibility for explaining that divine mercy leads us to the truths God revealed to us (and inscribed into the world and into us), then his reanimation of the papacy will advance the "Church in permanent mission" for which he called in Evangelii Gaudium, which is the grand strategy document of his pontificate.Collection: Media
Younger theologians will continue to pursue and understand truth rather than deconstructing it, as a lot of their elders seemed to want to do.Collection: Want