First World War (WWI)

The Catholic tradition reminds us that just war thinking is critical to peacemaking.

What we can gain from the origins of the Great War is that strategic ambiguity played a role in bringing on that cataclysm.

What would President Roosevelt say of President Joe Biden and his Democratic administration abandoning the Afghan people? Perhaps Biden, and many in the West, have turned away from winning because they have lost a sense that victory, even an unsatisfying partial victory, is politically and morally viable.

My rescued father revered Lincoln. “With malice toward none but with charity for all” was Lincoln’s Farewell Address to us. Leslie Morrison lived out Father Abraham’s good words. On Father’s Day, and every day, we can so live, too.

Browsing among the books, articles, and editorials of the past is instructive and exceedingly disturbing. One discovers the same concerns and anxieties as is everywhere apparent among thoughtful people now. Many paragraphs or sentences are as applicable today as they were then.

Memorial Day should remind us of a debt that we, as citizens, owe to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and it is a call to action to appropriately honor those who have served in the armed forces.

It is because we desire the good of concord that we fight for a decisive end to conflict, one that secures and allows the enforcement of a durable peace.

A century after the Great War’s end, we still have much to learn from its lessons and still wrestle with its consequences and leftovers.

“There is much for the chaplain to teach the church, as well as much instruction to be received from the church.”