Pomp, Circumstance, and Unsolicited Advice: Commencement Addresses and University Lectures

The Catholic Church invented what we know as the “university,” including the cultural tradition of free and open debate on disputed questions. Catholic colleges and universities thus stand poised to help reform institutions of higher learning at a moment of crisis in academic life throughout the western world.

In his commencement addresses to colleges and universities large and small, George Weigel challenges graduates to understand an academic degree as a summons to become the trustee of a great tradition. In his lectures to university audiences, Weigel addresses a host of issues in the contemporary Church and its interaction with the world with depth and insight.

Written in the vivid, often bracing style characteristic of one of contemporary Catholicism’s leading intellectuals, these addresses and lectures exemplify what Pope St. John Paul II called the Catholic “diakonia of the truth.”