"Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence…. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an [...]
Noblesse oblige is more than merely being civil. In a Christian context, it treats those less talented or less fortunate without a show of superiority because it recognizes that they, too, are made in the image and likeness of God… What it means to be “civil” has undergone severe scrutiny lately. Hillary Clinton, for example, [...]
The story of Beauty and the Beast is the oldest story in the Christian world. It’s the story about love, sacrifice, and redemption… Several nights ago, I reluctantly watched Disney’s 2017 live version of Beauty and the Beast. I must admit three things before I get into the heart of this essay. First, I’ve never [...]
Through reading the works of Charles Dickens, we may be inspired to take a closer look at our own priorities and come to a deeper understanding of our inability to embody perfectly our own ideals. Throughout the career of the esteemed literary giant Charles Dickens, selfless love as opposed to selfishness served as an underlying [...]
The orphans sat mute with astonishment until the opening hymn and prayer and the last amen had been said, and then they at a signal warily and slowly gathered around the tree to receive from a lovely young girl their allotted present... Rice, flour, molasses and tiny pieces of meat, most of them sent to [...]
Christianity, Edmund Burke held, is the great equalizer. Not only is it the first force in the world to recognize the moral equality of all men and women, but it allows the high and the low to become one in their equal desire for the good society… In a manner similar to Cicero with the [...]
Inasmuch as mercy is a human virtue, and the liberal arts are human education, the virtue of mercy is precisely the sort of thing one will explore in a good liberal arts curriculum… I would like to begin by drawing attention to the title of our symposium, “Mercy and the Liberal Arts.” It’s an intuitive [...]
It’s quite easy to forgive those who experience an attack of nausea upon hearing the phrase “Catholic Social Thinking.” In light of the misuse from which that phrase has suffered over the past half-century alternative responses are all too likely to indicate either that a person has not been paying attention or is lacking in [...]
Those who want to eradicate poverty make the Son of God a liar. They are mistaken and lying. —Robert Cardinal Sarah The economic problem … has been solved already: we know how to provide enough and do not require any hostile, inhuman, aggressive technologies to do so. There is no economic problem and, in a [...]
When the poor see beauty they see God. Why? Because “beauty” is God’s middle name. What building can better point the poor towards Christ than a church: a house of God that welcomes them, embraces them, and lifts them up. “[Saint] Peter teaches us to look to the poor through the eyes of faith and [...]
Like most everyone I could not help but be moved by the musical Les Miserables. It seemed a powerful story of redemption, and I even found myself feeling sympathetic to the young revolutionaries as they sang their final stirring anthem from the barricades. I am afraid that is where my sympathy for the Jacobins ends. [...]
My father was a born again businessman. A fervent Evangelical Christian, he owned and operated a chain of six men’s clothing stores in South Carolina. Sometimes his fellow Christians would ask, “Jim don’t you feel a bit guilty making so much profit?” “Not at all!” my Dad would grin, “I want to make as much [...]
It is easy to forget that tolerance was not original to the Enlightenment. After all, this is the narrative handed to us by most scholars and pundits. We forget that during the Reformation entire regions and cities like Alsace, Ravensburg, Lausanne, and Augsburg developed types of bi-confessionalism, where different confessions shared civic power and public [...]
Who really cares? People who mistrust big government give more of their money and time as volunteers to take care of the poor themselves. Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism America’s Charity Divide, by Arthur C. Brooks (250 pages, Basic Books, 2007) We live in two Americas: “America the Selfish” and “America [...]