“The world has heard enough of the so-called ‘rights of man.’ Let it hear something of the rights of God.” — Pope Leo XIII Like all the philosophers of the Enlightenment, John Locke believed that morality could be justified on purely rational grounds. Like all the philosophers of the Enlightenment, he was also wary of … Read more
St. Gregory’s University just concluded its first bi-annual “Leisure and Labor Conference,” which brings academics and professionals together to reflect on the interplay between the liberal arts and the professions. The dialogue between Martha and Jesus in Chapter 10 of Luke’s Gospel captures the essence of this relationship between labor and leisure. Mary sits at Jesus’s … Read more
Everyone agrees that there is something different about today’s angry politics. The ordinary issues that have shaped the political debate for years have largely remained the same. The economy is still in bad shape, terrorism remains a top concern and the deficit is still growing as fast as ever. The mood of the nation, however, … Read more
The annual Cardinal Winning Lecture on Catholic Education, sponsored by the St. Andrew’s Foundation, was delivered on February 6, 2016, at the University of Glasgow in Scotland by Tracey Rowland, the Australian theologian and Director of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne. Rowland is the author of two books on Benedict XVI and of … Read more
Samuel Gregg recently recapped an ongoing debate among conservatives and Catholics in America concerning how best to evangelize the contemporary culture. Gregg (whose work I admire) contends that the so-called “Benedict Option,” i.e., imitating St. Benedict by withdrawing from a perverted society to preserve civilization, “isn’t open to … American conservatives … who take natural … Read more
Recent months have witnessed an emerging debate among some American conservatives, especially religiously informed conservatives and, even more specifically, Catholic conservatives. This debate concerns how they can (and, in some cases, whether they should even attempt to) engage in a public square that seems ever more rooted in modern liberal presuppositions and preoccupations. At the … Read more
For those who have the courage to plunge headlong into the great sea of history, their minds accustomed to taking long views, the attractions of Protestantism are few and never fatal. But for those who know nothing of the past, whose minds are unwilling to travel to such places, the allure of Protestant piety with … Read more
Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1981 manifesto After Virtue famously ends with the argument that we are “waiting for another St. Benedict.” At some point, the old Roman Empire was lost. “Men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral … Read more
“[Monasteries] kept the world’s diary, faced the plagues of all flesh, taught the first technical arts, preserved the pagan literature, and above all, by a perpetual patchwork of charity, kept the poor from the most distant sight of their modern despair.” – G.K. Chesterton The Benedict Option is, like so many saintly practices, both a … Read more
Edith Stein was an unlikely saint. A former Jewish-atheist bluestocking who died for the Faith as a Carmelite nun in the gas chamber at Auschwitz, Stein was impelled by a quenchless thirst for truth. God in His Mercy placed in her life friends who were themselves, in one way or another, “hidden with Christ in … Read more
Believe it or not, in at least one specific area public discourse in the United States is a bit better than it was a few decades ago. How so? Today we occasionally hear the word “virtue” used—and not always in sarcasm. This is good news because the return of the word “virtue” to the lexicon … Read more