These courtesy of The Sacred Sandwich:

King James, Publisher:

For some things, you’ve just got to turn to bluegrass.  Who better than Bill Monroe in a solo performance?

All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return.  But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one.  Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

This passage from Hebrews was the second reading at Mass today.  It points to our place in this world as what Gabriel Marcel called homo viator, man on the way.  We are pilgrims.

The essential thrust of the modern project has been to overthrow the medieval conception of man and find a way to make us at home in the world through a remaking of man, nature, God, and society.  There have been some great results, certainly, toward the ‘relief of man’s estate’ and not many of us would relinquish indoor plumbing or antibiotics.

There remains, however, a nagging distrust of projects to relieve our sufferings and provide an adequate end for human life within this world.   Prozac comes at a cost to the self; thoughts of the Human Genome Project can trigger acid reflux; and one feels the urge to let the dog loose on well-meaning sociology graduate students conducting community surveys.  The Left promises social justice and a redistribution of wealth; the Right promises equality before the law and the fruits of a free market.

In an Atlanta suburb, a thoroughgoing Republican corporate executive and a progressive Democratic chairman of a non-profit might share a backyard fence where they can debate the merits of global warming legislation, but they share something more:  the creeping despair and nameless anxiety of members of the most prosperous society in human history.

The answers on the right are certainly better, as they are more consistent with human liberty, but the reminder that we are strangers and aliens serves to keep us from becoming ideological.  Conservatism is not an ideology; at its best, it is anti-ideological for the simple reason that ideology is a path to being at home in the world.

“Liberty and homelessness!” should be the rallying cry for Christian conservatives.  The key, as novelist Walker Percy put it, is to find a way to be at home with our homelessness.  Remember the least of these, love those you find on the way, and fight like hell against the encroachments of the state on the one hand and the tendency to commodify what ought never be commodified on the other.

On Saturday, May 22, 2010, the BioLogos Foundation published a paper of mine on its website, “Intelligent Design, Thomas Aquinas, and the Ubiquity of Final Causes.” It is excerpted and adapted from my article, “How to Be An Anti-Intelligent Design Advocate,” University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy 4.1 (2010): 35-65.

This BioLogos paper should be read in conjunction with the four blog posts I published this year on “Science & the Sacred,” the BioLogos Blog:

1. Intelligent Design and Me, Part I: In the Beginning
2. Intelligent Design and Me, Part II: Confessions of a Doting Thomist
3. Intelligent Design and Me, Part III: A Response to Some Critics
4. Intelligent Design and Me, Part IV: A Response to Some Critics

Following up on a two-part series I published in March on the BioLogos blog, this morning I published a third installment, “Intelligent Design and Me, Part III: A Response to Some Critics.” Here’s how it begins:

On March 19 and 20 of this year I posted two brief essays on the BioLogos blog (Part I and Part II). In them I summarized my own intellectual journey on the issue of Intelligent Design (ID). Since their publication, many responses have been published online in the comment threads of this and other blogs. Dear friends and respectful acquaintances offered some of these critiques.

Given my ontological finitude, my publishing and teaching schedule, as well as my increasingly diminishing interest in the topic, I could not and can not respond to each and every criticism, though I know that virtually all of them were offered with genuine respect. It is my hope that in this brief, and no doubt inadequate, reply that I can replicate my critics’ sincere deference.

Continue reading>>>

A fourth installment will appear tomorrow on the BioLogos blog.

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

The Roman Catholic vote splits about 50-50 between the two parties, indeed between two worthy ideologies, the “social Gospel” and the Gospel of “social issues.”

Still, nobody of either party wants the sick to die or the poor to go hungry. On those ends, all agree, the problem is usually disagreement over the means. However…

Now, what makes a “good” society can be discussed purely philosophically, but once we bring in the Beatitudes and the aforementioned “social Gospel,” it’s certainly theology. And surely many who want to help their fellow man and fellow citizens are motivated by love of God and what’s called “Christian charity.”

And that’s a beautiful thing.

However, God also gave us brains, and Providence has given us a republic, where we are all citizen-rulers. As Benjamin Franklin noted, if we can keep it. That will take some brains, or more precisely the virtue of prudence.

Now, it should be unnecessary to point out that a charitable state can create a dependency on the part of those it’s meant to help. And after the Good Samaritan takes the wounded man home and binds up his woulds, he doesn’t give him the spare bedroom and meals for life.

That would be silly, and no good for either man.

But the alarming thing in the current national debate isn’t just creating dependency, it’s that a “right” to each other’s charity is being established in the minds of our citizens.

This is really silly, and helps no one—in fact, it creates an unworkable state of affairs.

“Communitarianism” is a nice nonpejorative term, but lately the “community” is nowhere to be found in it—only a faceless state, a magic bank where we put in pennies and take out dollars, and call it our “due.”

And so it comes as no surprise that at least one of our American universities urges its students to tap into food stamps:

• SNAP is not a charity. As a taxpayer, you are paying into this program and, when needed, you can reap the benefits.

And, hey, don’t worry—there’s plenty for everyone:

• There are enough SNAP dollars for everyone that needs them. As a matter of fact, about 20 percent of Oregonians who are eligible for SNAP do not apply.

But of course, this is all nonsense—at least half of Americans will take more from the government than they will ever pay in, and if you’ve looked at the books lately, it’s projecting to a lot more than half.

In a purely political sense, this sense of entitlement will bankrupt the country; philosophically, this sense of “justice” cannot co-exist with “community.”

If you remember Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” there’s a run on the community bank. One guy demands every dollar from his account that he’s put in.

CHARLIE
I’ll take mine now.

GEORGE
No, but you . . . you . . . you’re thinking of this place all
wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not
here. Your money’s in Joe’s
house . . .
(to one of the men)
. . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs.
Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them
the money to build, and then, they’re
going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you
going to do? Foreclose on them?

TOM
I got two hundred and forty-two dollars in here, and two hundred
and forty-two dollars isn’t going to break anybody.

Well, as you recall, Jimmy Stewart breaks out his and Donna Reed’s own money, their $2000 for their honeymoon, and Tom insists on his $242.

But if everybody demands their full share, the money will run out right quick, and the community bank will close forever.

Eventually, people start getting real:

ED
I got three hundred dollars here, George.

GEORGE
Aw, now, Ed . . . what’ll it take till the bank reopens? What do
you need?

ED
Well, I suppose twenty dollars.

GEORGE
Twenty dollars. Now you’re talking. Fine. Thanks, Ed.
(to Mrs. Thompson, next in line)
All right, now, Mrs. Thompson. How much do you want?

MRS. THOMPSON
But it’s your own money, George.

GEORGE
Never mind about that. How much do you want?

MRS. THOMPSON
I can get along with twenty, all right.

GEORGE (counting it out)
Twenty dollars.

MRS. THOMPSON
And I’ll sign a paper.

GEORGE
You don’t have to sign anything. I know you’ll pay it back when
you can. That’s okay.

All right, Mrs. Davis.

MRS. DAVIS
Could I have seventeen-fifty?

GEORGE
Seven . . .
(he kisses her)
Bless your heart, Of course you can have it. You got fifty cents?
(counting)
Seven . . .

And so, the bank makes it through the end of the day, and survives. The clock strikes six, and they even have two dollars to spare!

But we better start getting real in a hurry in this country. And our universities better start teaching the real “communitarianism” of Frank Capra instead of some twisted abstraction of “justice” that’s all “rights” for the individual and no “duties” to the community. This is not, as they say, “sustainable.”

The people of the fictional Bedford Falls figured it out. The real America is on the clock…

Sorry to post so seldom here, but this is a case right up SA’s alley. Imagine a law school that refuses to recognize a Christian student group because it requires its officers to be… yes, Christian. We at the Washington Times editorialized on it today. More on the case available here.  A key paragraph from the masterful lead brief for the Christian Legal Society by the peerless Michael McConnell is here:

A “variety of viewpoints” is far more likely to be
achieved when students are allowed to sort themselves
out by interest and viewpoint—Republicans in
one club, Democrats in another; Muslims in one organization,
Lutherans in another. Without such sorting,
all viewpoints are blurred. The Democratic Caucus
becomes the Bipartisan Caucus; the Christian,
Jewish, and Muslim clubs become the Ecumenical
Society; and every other group organized around a
belief becomes a Debate Club. Each group becomes
no more than its own diverse forum—writ small. The
all-comers rule thus defeats the very purpose of recognizing
any group as a group in the first place. Preventing
students from organizing around shared beliefs
does not foster a robust or diverse exchange of
views.

This is a crucially important case. Free speech, free religion, and free association all hang in the balance.

Next Thursday, January 28, is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas. Over at my Return to Rome blog, I have dedicated January 23-28 to An Aquinas Catechism. It will include video lectures, excerpts from Thomas’ works, and words of praise from prelates and professors.

You can find the blog here. The first two installments are here and here.

Pat Robertson has been accused of blaming the Haiti earthquake on” God’s wrath” and Haiti’s “pact with the Devil” – though if you actually listen to his comments, that isn’t’ exactly true – though I would agree that his words, and their timing, were poorly chosen at best. Nothing really new for Reverend Robertson. Now, Danny Glover is blaming the Haiti earthquake on Gaia. So, my question to all you theologians: Who’s running this world, Father God or mother nature? Will Glover suffer the same scorn? Of course, the questions are rhetorical ones.

And, in a very strange providence, I watched a PBS documentary last night about Haiti and her revolutionary military leader, François-Dominique Toussaint L’ouverture. It was a fascinating film. Part of the narrative went into some detail about Haiti’s voodooism and their so-called “pact with the devil.” At about 6:11 into the following clip–and until the end of the clip taken from the PBS special–the connection between voodoo and Haiti’s revolution against France is quite plainly made by the narrative–the same connection to which Robertson referred in his now infamous comments. Hmmm . . . did the producers of this documentary consult with Pat Robertson or are they simply saying the same thing without the charismatic, evangelical “flair”?

Merry Christmas!

Well, Garrison Keillor must have been  a bit deep in the eggnog when he penned his latest column.  Evidently, he had been traumatized by a visit to a Unitarian church in Cambridge where they do Silent Night neo-pagan style:  ”I discovered that “Silent Night” has been cleverly rewritten to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God.”

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough.

So far, so good.  However, I can’t imagine hearing something like this on Prairie Home Companion except as a smug shot a the Christian right (though he certainly has gentler parodies of the Unitarians here and there).

He then goes on to extend his tirade to the cabal of Jewish songwriters who provide the soundtrack for our holiday shopping.  Here he well and truly loses it:

And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah“? No, we didn’t.

Considering that he begins his column by lambasting Larry Summers (Harvard’s first Jewish president and a current economic advisor to the White House), I think we’re seeing a little of the anti-semitism that permeates the ever-so-nuanced NPR Left.

Sorry, Garrison, I don’t think I can do without White Christmas and, at this time when we celebrate the coming of the Messiah, I certainly can’t do without the Jews.

HT Powerline.  You can read their take on their fellow Minnesotan here.

Ever since I can remember remembering I have been fascinated with Vikings. I think it began when I read a condensed version of Beowulf in a Childcraft encyclopedia. The story was exciting and the pictures of huge warriors wearing horned or winged helmets wielding massive swords captured my imagination. Shortly thereafter I discovered Norse mythology and my interest in al things Viking skyrocketed.

However, the more I learned about the Vikings the more I understood that they were not, to put it mildly, friendly to Christendom. As the product of a devout Southern Baptist upbringing this was always somewhat troubling for me. Imagine my excitement when I discovered Lars Walker’s books about Erling Skjalgsson, Norway’s first Christian lord. The first book, The Year of the Warrior, is a rousing page turner that I simply could not put down. Simply put, it is an exciting mix of historical fiction and fantasy. Mr. Walker has continued Erling’s saga with his most recent book, West Oversea. In this book, Erling and his companions journey to the new world. As with the first book, West Oversea not only delivers an action packed story but also some penetrating spiritual insights. However, it does this without getting “preachy” or sacrificing good story telling. If you are strapped for gift ideas then look no further, just remember to get a copy for yourself.

Best interview yet with the guys from the White Horse Inn.  If you are crunched for time, start it up around the 20 minute mark.  Great questions.  And great commentary from the guys after I go off the air. (Just click on The End of Secularism under the Listen Now header.)

Highly recommended.

And, of course, here’s your obligatory link to the book.

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

(Update II: You may download the Manhattan Declaration)
(Update: The Manhattan Declaration’s website)
This, just over the AP wire:

Christian leaders issue ‘call of conscience’

WASHINGTON — More than 150 Christian leaders, most of them conservative evangelicals and traditionalist Roman Catholics, issued a joint declaration Friday reaffirming their opposition to abortion and gay marriage and pledging to protect religious freedoms.

The 4,700-word document, called “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience,” sounds familiar themes from political and social debates over the health care overhaul and gay marriage battles.

While acknowledging that “Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage,” the group rejects same-sex marriage. The declaration states that opening a legal door for gay marriage would do the same for “polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships.”

President Barack Obama’s desire to reduce the need for abortion is “a commendable goal,” but his proposals are likely to increase the number of elective abortions, the document contends.

“The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense,” it says.

Obama has said he wants to strike a balance on abortion coverage in the health care overhaul. The declaration also cites threats to health care workers’ conscience clauses and anti-discrimination statutes it argues impinge on religious freedoms.

Signatories include 15 Roman Catholic bishops, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl; Focus on the Family founder James Dobson; National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson; seminary leaders, professors and pastors.

Once the Manhattan Declaration is online, I will post a link to it.

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

On this Reformation Day, I bring to your attention one of my favorite essays, penned by the president of Ignatius Press, Mark Brumley. Entitled, “Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation,” Brumley writes:

Interpreting the Reformation is complicated business. But like many complicated things, it can be simplified sufficiently well that even non-experts can get the gist of it. Here’s what seems a fairly accurate but simplified summary of the issue: The break between Catholics and Protestants was either a tragic necessity (to use Jaroslav Pelikan’s expression) or it was tragic because unnecessary.

Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is “Come out from among them” and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Yet for most Protestants, even for most conservative Protestants, this is not so. They believe God “raised up” Luther and the other Reformers to restore the Gospel in its purity. They regret that this required a break with Roman Catholics (hence the tragedy) but fidelity to Christ, on their view, demanded it (hence the necessity).

Catholics agree with their more agreeable Protestant brethren that the sixteenth century division among Christians was tragic. But most Catholics who think about it also see it as unnecessary. At least unnecessary in the sense that what Catholics might regard as genuine issues raised by the Reformers could, on the Catholic view, have been addressed without the tragedy of dividing Christendom.

Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work — for Protestantism’s principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church.

You can read the whole thing here.

(Originally posted on the Return to Rome blog)

Today, October 31, is Reformation Day, a day on which many Protestants commemorate Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral on October 31, 1517. Writes Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, “The Protestant Reformation began when a Catholic monk rediscovered a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book. The monk, of course, was Luther; the doctrine was justification by faith; and the book was the Bible.”

In 2005, Baker Book House published Is The Reformation Over?: An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism, authored by the eminent historian Mark A. Noll and journalist Carolyn Nystrom. It was one of the many works that I read on my journey back to the Catholic Church. As I write in chapter 5 of Return to Rome:

Although this led me to read other sources including the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, I also read several reviews of the Noll/Nystrom book, one of which was written by Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary. I single out this review because of its concluding paragraph, which rocked me to the core:
(more…)

31 October is Reformation Day.

Last weekend I had the privilege to address the 18th annual Marian Conference in Boyne Falls, Michigan. Among the other speakers was my high school classmate, the Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample, Catholic Bishop of Marquette, Michigan. It was such a joy to visit with Bishop Sample, who I had not seen in over 30 years. We are members of the 1978 graduating class of Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. Enclosed in this blog entry are photos of us at the conference. In one of them is Bishop Sample’s mother, Mrs. Joyce Dory Sample. The photos were taken by Joshua Mercer, the gentleman who directed the conference, and performed exceptionally in that capacity. (For more information on the conference as well as the Marian Center, which is run by Josh and his lovely wife, Lori, see the website mariancenter.org.)

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

I will be a guest on tomorrow’s Deep in Scripture radio program, hosted by Marcus Grodi. The passages of Scripture we will discuss is one that has a profound influence on my life, I Peter 3:14-17 (RSV):

But even if you do suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s will, than for doing wrong.

You can listen to the program at 9 pm EDT on October 21. It is broadcast on EWTN radio and its affiliates, a list of which you can find here.

Just discovered a new blog at First Things, Evangel. Some of my favorite people are blogging there, including John Mark Reynolds, Russell Moore, Justin Taylor, and my former student Hunter Baker (who recently published the outstanding book, The End of Secularism). I was, however, surprised to find that rabid anti-Catholic blogger Frank Turk is among the cadre of Evangel’s bloggers. Soon after I became Catholic, Mr. Turk opined that my return to Catholicism at age 46 was as hollow as when I became a Protestant as a teenager. Read it here.

I had no idea that Mr. Turk was so gifted in the clairvoyant arts, able to not only jump the space-time continuum to observe my teenage years but to pierce the veil of cognitive and spiritual privacy in order to extract from my soul the reflections, contemplations, and judgments that were instrumental in my journey back to Catholicism. Given his unusual interest in comic book aesthetics, perhaps he possesses powers not unlike the mutants that populate the imaginary world to which he seems so drawn (pardon the pun). Or perhaps he is just ill-mannered and presumptuous.

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

That’s the title of my newest book. The publisher’s web page for the book, along with its cover, just appeared online this week.

Politics for Christians will be released by InterVarsity Press in March 2010. It is not an academic monograph (like Defending Life, which was published by Cambridge in 2007), but a brief introduction to the study of politics for Christian college students. But it’s not activism oriented. It is geared toward dealing with the philosophical issues that percolate beneath the religion-politics discussions that are ubiquitous in the public square. Here’s what the publisher says about the book:
(more…)

This one’s getting hot in the blogosphere, especially the leftosphere, which lives for well-deserved fun at “conservative” expense. [Especially since they cannot affirmatively defend the president's and the leftist congressional leadership's communitarian agenda on its own merits.]

Still, the lefties have cause for derision.

Conservapedia.com is a lame and intellectually underpowered effort to counter the left-leaning bias of Wikipedia, which is a “People’s encyclopedia.” Unfortunately for the truth, lefties seem far more motivated to contribute their “truth” to the internet, as if truth can be democratized, a matter of consensus and shouting loudest.

As opposed to you know, truth.

Anyway to cut back to the conservapedists, they’ve started a
“Conservative Bible Project.”

Arrrgh. Did I, as a self-described conservative, sign up for this?

They have some good points, like opposing the contemporary current towards monkeying with Biblical language toward “gender-neutrality.”

However, they’ve also taken aim at perhaps the most beloved and beautiful story in the New Testament, from John 8:

1Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

11She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

That’s the King James Version; the Catholic Douay-Rheims is right in that zone too.

Although Roman Catholics don’t give a damn, since the pericope de adultera ["story of the adulteress"] was declared canonical by the Council of Trent [1563], we got modern day fundies actually rejecting a passage of the Bible based on Biblical scholarship, its case being somewhat persuasive, since there were early versions of the Gospel of John that lacked this passage!

[Moving directly from Jn 7 to Jn 8 omitting the pericope de adultera!]

Anywayz, who says religion is boring? We got fundamentalists erasing parts of the Bible, and the Magisterium telling them to chill.

What a world. I’m not sure conservatives should take this one lying down. Otherwise we give this one up to conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, and as one of those other self-described conservatives, I get cast as picking up a rock to stone the adulteress.

I’m not good with that. Not good atall.

One of the most well-worn cliches in modern politics is that the Republican party and the conservative movement have become too religious.  We’ve been portrayed as scary Christianists bent on creating a theocracy.  Both secular and Christian leftists have attempted to attack the right by claiming especially that conservative economic theory runs directly against Christ’s teachings.  In so doing the Christian leftists have revealed their own  “theocratic”   leanings.  Moreover, they have tried to recruit Jesus Christ to their cause on economic issues because they realize they have fallen short on social issues.

The latest portrayal of Jesus Christ, socialist superstar, is Michael Moore’s latest bomb. (Please go see this movie.  Michael Moore is very sad that you are not seeing his movie.  You could be in grave danger if you don’t go and support him.)  As Ann Althouse details, Moore littered his anti-capitalist screed with a healthy dose of that old time religion.  He trains his camera on Priests who have unkind words for the free market, and Moore of course relies on out of context scriptural readings that evidently support the hypothesis that Christ was the original Marxist.

Alan Colmes – noted non-Christian – also claims that Christ would be not-so-approving of the modern GOP.  It’s always helpful when non-Christians try to claim some insight into what the non-Messiah might have been thinking.

Again, this is all very silly.  But what’s most infuriating about these arguments is that it reveals the left’s own attempts to appropriate Jesus to advance their political interests in a fashion that their opponents rarely do.  Aside from the promoters of the Prosperity Gospel, few conservative Christians actually try to advance the idea that their particular economic theories have been especially endorsed by the Lord.  Of course we’ll argue that our ideas do not conflict with Christian values, and Catholic conservatives will cite passages from both Scripture and the Catechism to disprove the notion that our ideas are at odds with Church teachings.  But rarely will you these same people act as though their ideas and their ideas alone are the only God-approved ways of thinking about economic issues.

The fact of the matter is that we probably all fall short when it comes to economic matters.  There is a strand of conservative thinking that is uncaring when it comes to addressing the needs of the poor and is influenced by a Randian worldview that places far, far too much stock in individualism.  But leftists are guilty of violating subsidiarity, and I believe their reliance on government assistance de-emphasizes personal responsibility and charity.

The Christian left can rationalize all they want, but the fact of the matter is social issues are much more black and white, and Church teachings on matters such as abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and other issues are absolute and unchanging.  Left-wing Catholics and other Christians either ignore clear teachings on these matters or give aid and comfort to those who do.  Therefore I think that when it comes to economic issues, they are driven by a need to prove their Christian bona fides by asserting that they are the good stewards on economic matters.  It’s always rather sad when guilty consciences try to over-compensate for their shortcomings in other areas.  But no one should be fooled by what’s really happening here.

I always admire the sincerity and honesty with which Andrew Sullivan approaches questions of faith: he is critically skeptical of the Church’s position on a host of issues and makes zero bones about it. He recoils at the idea of the Church (neh, God’s law…) prohibiting suicide even during the greatest moments of pain: (more…)

“I don’t think we put enough stress on the necessity of implanting in the child’s mind the moral code under which we live.

The fundamental basis of this Nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.

If we don’t have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state.”

OK, OK, you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s not Glenn Beck.

The answer is

Harry S. Truman
Address Before the Attorney General’s Conference on Law Enforcement Problems
February 15, 1950

Now, I don’t necessarily agree with him chapter and verse, but it wasn’t all that long ago that such talk was uncontroversial.

Although these days it seems like a million years…

___________________
[HT: WorldTribune-Editor.]

Last Thursday, September 3, I participated in a public dialogue with my friend Timothy George, Dean of the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University (Birmingham, Alabama). Entitled, “Can You Be Catholic and Evangelical?,” it took place at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. A video of the event is now online. You can find it here.

There are many people that made this event possible, including my friend, Timothy George, who is an exemplar of deep learning and Christian charity. Another friend, Chris Castaldo, a pastor at College Church in Wheaton, did an outstanding job in moderating this dialogue. And if not for the generosity of the Penner family, this event would not have been possible. They deserve special thanks for their unyielding support of Wheaton’s Christian mission. And, as has always been my experience at that institution, its leadership’s professionalism and hospitality could not have been bettered. It was a delight to meet both President Duane Litfin as well as Dr. Vincent Bacote, Director of the Wheaton Center for Applied Christian Ethics, the academic unit that sponsored the event. Thank you.

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

I will be a guest on EWTN’s The Journey Home on September 14. It is broadcast at 8 pm EDT.

This is the second time I will have appeared on the program. The first time was on September 24, 2007. You can find a video of that episode here.

Coincidentally, my friend, Mary C. Moorman, a lawyer and theologian, will be a guest on The Journey Home two weeks later on September 28. Mary is a former Presbyterian and Anglican. She is also a former student of my long-time and dear friend Michael Bauman (Professor of Theology & Culture, Hillsdale College).

This summer has been one of profitable reading for me. Among the many books I have read are two that are particularly outstanding. Their virtue lies in the skillful, informed, and clear way they dismantle the case for unbelief made by a small cluster of writers that has come to be known as “The New Atheists.” (To paraphrase Peter Townsend, “Meet the new atheism, same as the old atheism,” except that the old atheism was far more sophisticated and understanding of the gravity of what it was rejecting. When you move from Bertrand Russell to Richard Dawkins, you’re not trading up).

I highly recommend God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins by Thomas Crean, O. P. (Ignatius Press, 2007) and Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press, 2009). Fr. Crean does yeoman’s work by offering a largely philosophical and theological response to the new atheists, and yet it is fully accessible to non-specialists. Professor Hart takes up the task of dismantling the sophomoric historical narrative of the new atheists. Neither author suffers fools, which makes for some entertaining reading as well. Both authors have been interviewed about their books. You can listen to John J. Miller’s NRO interview of Professor Hart here. Ignatius Press has published an interview with Fr. Crean, which you can find here. Enjoy.
(Originally posted on First Thoughts)