Weekly Summary: 10/11/25

The week in review, from the perspective of a veteran Catholic journalist

• Looking back at the controversy over Cardinal Cupich’s decision to honor Senator Dick Durbin, and the senator’s curious decision to decline the award, and the Pope’s carefully worded statement ducking the main question involved, I speculated about how an agreement might have been cobbled together to defuse the situation.

• Writing on the CatholicCuture site— before the news of a ceasefire agreement— I observed that all too often, legitimate criticism of Israel’s military campaign had been unfairly portrayed as support for Hamas. A just cause for war is not a blank check for immoral conduct of the war.

• Also on CatholicCulture, I offered my first quick analysis of Dilexi Te, the first major teaching document by Pope Leo, who picks up some of the thoughts of Pope Francis, but makes his own distinctive voice heard in an apostolic exhortation on poverty. (I’ll be writing a more extensive commentary early next week.)

• My just-war “seminar” took a different perspective this week, looking at some of the practical aspects of battlefield behavior over the course of history, John Keegan’s book, The Face of Battle, describes three historic battles (at Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme), and shows how despite the changes over the centuries, some features of battle remain constant— including, notably, his conclusion that war is a test of moral character.

• On the Home Front podcast, Leila and I discussed the seeming inability of liberal Democrats to renounce violence, and (before the ceasefire news) the way Cardinal Parolin applied just-war thinking to Gaza.

• Finally— later in the week than usual— I posted another sneak-preview chapter of my forthcoming novel, Ghost Runner. If you haven’t sampled it yet, you have some catching up to do; we’re up to Chapter 6, and the introduction of Betsy Howell, the “miracle lady.”