The economic difficulties of the past several years in the United States have led more and more people to take an active interest in monetary policy and in the Federal Reserve System. Many possess an inchoate sense that there must be a connection between past monetary policy and our current doldrums. At a time when monetary matters are attracting so much attention, therefore, it may be particularly opportune to consider the moral dimensions of the present monetary regime. As...

It is worth remembering what George Washington said in his farewell address about religion: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports …. Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be...

As anyone who lives in the Detroit Metropolitan area knows, the divisions between city and suburbs, which run along race and class lines, are deep and seemingly intractable. These divisions are what make a Catholic high school in Detroit, at one of which I am a teacher,so different from a Catholic high school in the suburbs. Like Rabbit, the protagonist in the recently debuted movie 8 Mile, my students hail from the south monly considered the “wrong” – side...

Conventional understanding may tend to gloss over the distinction between the concepts munity or society and of state or government. Many in the popular media often use the munity, society, state, and government interchangeably. mon usage of these terms introduces a fallacy with potentially dire consequences. Communal or social obligations are those that all people have mon. This does not mean that every social obligation is, or should be, enforceable by the state or government. While honest debate may...

To my knowledge, the evangelical Protestant Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) and the evangelical Roman Catholic Karol Wojtyla (1920-) never met. Francis Schaeffer, founder of L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, was a Christian intellectual and cultural critic, practical theologian, author, noted speaker, and evangelist, whose ministry in the last half of the twentieth century incited worldwide study and discipleship centers. Karol Wojtyla (1920-) is a philosopher, university professor, theologian, priest, bishop, cardinal, author, noted speaker, evangelist, and, last but not least, the...

The conceptual distinction between the exercise of authority and the exercise of power provides an essential guide to understanding the present and future status of Christendom, which has not been abolished but, rather, has taken on new forms in our times. The Second Vatican Council, in its document Lumen Gentium, clarified that the Kingdom of God is not a place or a government, much less an earthly end-state arrived at through the political process. Instead, it is “established by...

“We are going to see a revival in this country, and it's going to be led by rich people.” — Michael Novak, cited in Dinesh D' Souza's Virtue of Prosperity The title of my ing book, The Good of Affluence: Seeking God in a Culture of Wealth, might raise an eyebrow or two. Readers who are at all familiar with contemporary Christian scholarship on the subject of economic life under capitalism will immediately catch that my approach is not...

It is a mentary on our times that the political and ethical cognoscenti associate freedom with licentiousness, antinomianism, atomistic individualism, and an array of similar vices antithetical to virtue. Despite this attitude on the part of many professional mon sense tells any sane person that a society that is both free and virtuous is the place in which he would most want to live. But what exactly would it mean to advocate and work toward the construction of such...

The horrors of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath have so occupied our minds for the past nine months that the serious social pathologies of our urban centers have receded from our attention. The actions of a few terrorists somehow make even mugging, robbery, drug peddling, and inadequate education seem like minor troubles. These problems are not going away, however, and they may not be ignored. The difficulty, of course, in dealing with issues such as poverty, crime, race,...

On New Year’s Day, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a mammoth cheese was delivered to the White House by the itinerant Baptist preacher John Leland. It measured more than four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, and seventeen inches in height; once cured, it weighed 1,235 pounds. The colossal cheese was made by the staunchly Republican, Baptist citizens of Cheshire, a small munity in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts....

Monsignor George G. Higgins, who died at the age of eighty-six on May Day 2002, dedicated his social ministry to improving the lives of workers. A priest with a doctorate in labor economics, he was uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of Roman Catholic social teaching concerning the dignity of the worker. Father Higgins was also a passionate defender of religious liberty in the American tradition and was very influential in the Second Vatican Council’s statement on behalf of...

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. —Sir Francis Bacon Leisure without human letters amounts to death, the entombment of a living man. —Saint William Fermat Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library. —Sir Winston Churchill In every society, power must be humanized and used morally in order that free and civilized life might prosper. And in a money-based economy, businessmen and businesswomen wield great power and are frequently called...