On April 25, a videotaped talk by Pope Francis was released at the international TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. The 18-minute talk, titled “Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone,” can be viewed here. Francis highlighted three themes, beginning with the observation that community is central to human existence: [L]ife flows through our…
Read More »

One of my first lessons in economics and politics came from an unlikely place—vacation Bible school. I must have been about six or seven. For a week, I went to church to learn with other children my age about our faith and the Church. Throughout the week we had the opportunity to earn stickers….
Read More »

Easter is the day of liberation—the day the greatest earthly power has done its best, unleashed its ultimate weapon—and been defeated.

This Christmas marks the 100th anniversary of the spontaneous “Christmas Truce” created by trench-warfare soldiers of World War I. All along the European front, soldiers lay down their arms on Christmas day, and took the chance that those on the other side would join them in observing their common holy day: A German soldier,…
Read More »

Those of us enjoying the multiple benefits of societies built upon respect for our human and economic rights ought especially to pause to give thanks for God’s incarnation as Christ, celebrated this week. There is thankfully now a rich literature from which we can learn how the many principles and laws we take for…
Read More »

If it’s true that the first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem, then last week’s release of the report detailing the CIA’s torturing of prisoners can at least hopefully provide the impetus for Americans to disavow such methods and begin to rein in the out-of-control security state that has grown especially…
Read More »

The reactions from the progressive side of the fence to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. was stunning.  The spin is that American women have been stripped of fundamental constitutional protections. Sandra Fluke at The Washington Post’s blog claimed that “[t]he Hobby Lobby case is an attack on women.”  The White House lamented that the decision…
Read More »

Christina Hoff Sommers offers a great fact check on the propaganda currently being spread to “Ban Bossy,” here. As she details, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s campaign is rooted in cherry-picked data and at least one extremely old study that conveniently support her premise. Girls overall are doing better than boys, and “Bossy” is irrelevant…
Read More »

I’ve just finished reading Leo Tolstoy’s remarkable book The Kingdom of God Is Within You. This was written in Russian and completed in 1893, but the Russian censors forbade its publication. It circulated in unpublished form in Russia, however, and was soon translated into other languages and published abroad. It had substantial influence on…
Read More »

In Letters to a Diminished Church, Dorothy Sayers writes about God’s incarnation as Jesus: …for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has…
Read More »