Peggy Noonan

5 days ago | lopinion.fr | Peggy Noonan

Les catholiques choisissent leur guide avec une profonde douceur, et le monde entier y est convié.

6 days ago | wsj.com | Peggy Noonan

There’s a deep sweetness to how the Catholics choose their leader, inviting the world. White smoke. The cardinals moved quickly, after only four or five ballots. Is that a good sign? But the smoke is white, and people came running, and the crowd in St. Peter’s Square burst into sustained cheers, with chanting and then laughing, and the huge ancient bells began to ring.

1 week ago | wsj.com | Peggy Noonan

He is what he wanted to be, a world-historic figure, and we have entered a new time. It sounds dangerous. America continues divided into two groups. One thinks, “He is something that happened to us.” The tone is shocked, still, and bewildered: Did I live in this country all this time and not understand it? The other thinks, “He is something we did.” The tone is pride and, still, surprise: I didn’t know we could seize things back. Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Peggy Noonan

It is impossible that message didn’t spread, didn’t enter hearts, didn’t change lives. That he was generally understood, at least in time, to be of the liberal part of the church, gave cheer, after two consecutive conservative papacies, to those in liberalism’s precincts, and a sense of change and vitality to the church itself. Things, if they’re alive, go back and forth. But if we are in mourning, it is dry-eyed.

3 weeks ago | wsj.com | Peggy Noonan

Consider the story of the good thief in Luke, and the Jewish idea of teshuva, or returning to goodness. This being Holy Week and Passover, a small reflection on Scripture. There are stories and moments in the Old and New Testaments that grab hold of us, some from the first time we hear them, and stay. One, for me, is the story of the good thief. Christ is on the cross, being put to death between two common criminals. The soldiers jeer. The thief on the left bitterly mocks him. “Aren’t you the Messiah?