In late April, Commonweal ran a piece by William Wood on a talk by Cardinal George

In the latest issue, George and some others respond to Wood’s account

That my few remarks didn’t imply in any way “a nostalgia for Christendom” was well enough understood by others at a conference dedicated to exploring what philosophy can learn from tradition. The papacy is a two-thousand-year-old institution that has undergone numerous changes and still persists because, Catholics believe, it is an actor not just in human history but in salvation history. It will undergo more changes in the future, as various social orders and states, even our own, come and go. Speaking to the change of popes, I intended only to comment on how a man like Benedict XVI, who has written on the theology of history and who shares Pope John Paul’s conviction that personal freedom is in danger when it is played off against moral truths, might want to position the church at this historic turning point in the Western Europe he loves so well.