Religious liberty is "the most fundamental freedom in society" and it is at "the very core of the human condition," attorney and scholar Joseph Weiler told an audience at The Catholic University of America in Washington. He gave a lecture at a ceremony where he was presented an honorary doctorate of theology by the university. In attendance were John Garvey, the university's president, and several members of its academic faculty at the March 19 event hosted by the School of Theology and Religious Studies. In honoring Weiler, the university cited his lifelong contributions to the cause of religious liberty, scholarship on Judeo-Christian morality in European public life, and the continued development of Catholic-Jewish relations in the Western world. Weiler, born in 1951 in Johannesburg, South Africa, is the Joseph Straus professor of law at New York University. He also is the European Union Jean Monnet chaired professor, co-director of the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice, and president of the European University Institute, based in Florence, Italy. He is the author of several works relating to law and the European Union. Though he has received many honorary doctorates in his life, Weiler admitted before the ceremony that this one would be his first in theology.
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...