Weekly Summary: 3/14/26
The week in review, from the perspective of a veteran Catholic journalist
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Articles
Commenting on the war in Iran, Pope Leo called for “dialogue” to establish peace. But what happens when negotiations fail? The Vatican’s constant calls for “dialogue” risk becoming predictable and therefore irrelevant. Rather than calling for “Peace, peace, when there is not peace,” far better would be to rely on the eminently practical guidance of the just-war tradition.
As a companion article, later in the week I posted A just-war examination of conscience on the CatholicCulture site, listing the tough questions that should be asked about American involvement in Iran.
Also for CatholicCulture, I reviewed a collection of short essays by Ida Friederike Görres on the nature of marriage, newly available in translation. Ida Friederike Görres is like Pascal in that she delivers her thoughts in bite-size pieces; like Chesterton in that she is eminently quotable. If you haven’t discovered her yet, you should.
On the Home Front podcast, Leila and I discussed the possible closing of the venerable La Trappe abbey, and how the dire implications for Europe and Christendom. We also spoke about how Lebanese Christians are suffering and dying as the war in Iran expands. And more, as always.
I cobbled together a brilliantly worded insight from St. John Henry Newman with a very prosaic (and not entirely serious) slogan of my own, to write about Discipline and the Limits of Reason.
Notes
When President Trump demanded the “unconditional surrender” of Iran, I pointed out that if there is nothing to negotiate, then the Iranian regime has no incentive for peace talks— which means the ayatollahs might go on fighting long after their situation is hopeless.
Then later in the week, when Trump threatened to hit Iran “twenty times harder” if the Strait of Hormuz is mined, I wondered what effect that would have on a government run by terrorists, enamored of suicide bombing, who just don’t care about how much their people suffer.
On a lighter note, I couldn’t help noticing that while I reset my clocks to account for daylight savings time, my chickens didn’t. Now what were they saying about how DST helps farmers?
The Wall Street Journal reports that a record number of Congressmen are choosing not to run for re-election this year. Is that because politics isn’t fun anymore? Or because they want to get out of town before more Congressional scandals are uncovered?
