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Would Prophet Muhammad punish Salman Rushdie?

The horrific assassination attempt against author Salman Rushdie has provoked both cheers and condemnation from Muslims. But which response is more faithful to the scripture and the Prophet of Islam? Read More… It seems that the infamous “death fatwa” that Ayatollah Khomeini issued against Salman Rushdie back in 1989 for his novel The Satanic Verses, which most Muslims found offensive, finally reached it mark on August 12 in upstate New York. Seconds after the award-winning author appeared on stage at...

Natural law limits government and arbitrary power

Human flourishing demands that laws be reasonable and in the interest of mon good, and that, as Aquinas noted, the state not “impede people from acting according to their responsibilities.” Subsidiarity, too, is natural law. Read More… Any discussion of the nature and ends of liberty and justice inevitably touches upon the role of government and law in society. A good place to begin reﬂecting upon natural law’s approach to these questions is Aquinas’ understanding of law. In his Summa...

When a Joke is the difference between freedom and tyranny

What can a 50-year-old movie about munist regime in Czechoslovakia tell us about cancel culture and microaggressions today? Nothing, if we’re not willing to struggle. Read More… This year, at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the major film attraction in Eastern Europe, there was a memento of the Prague Spring: a newly restored version of the 1969 movie The Joke, directed by Jaromil Jireš and adapted by him and Milan Kundera from the latter’s eponymous debut novel. The Joke was...

Customers put product value ahead of political values

Woke capitalism prioritizes politics. But paying customers always put service and price first. Read More… For years American business has allowed itself to be swayed by the push and pull of political culture. Investment decisions, corporate donations, and hiring practices have been made in response to a culture that demands acquiescence or cancellation. But as Netflix, Disney, and State Farm deal with political and cultural backlash from both sides on a host of issues, and politicians scapegoat businesses large and...

Pope Francis wants us to pray for small and medium-sized enterprises

In a surprising change in tone, Pope Francis issued a call to pray for businesspeople who “dedicate an immense creative capacity to changing things from the bottom up.” Is the class-warfare rhetoric over? Read More… Who would ever have guessed this would happen? Well, it did. And in the quiet month of Rome’s roasting August, when the city experiences a near-total exodus to cooler climes. Very few journalists, in either the religious or secular press, noticed. Yet, it rightfully made...

The Trump raid will only harden Americans’ positions

The search of Mar-a-Lago is not the first time a high-ranking official (or former official) has been under intense criminal investigation. But it may be the first time that public trust in the integrity of the agencies carrying out that investigation has been this low. Read More… It’s 1973. The Watergate scandal that would ultimately doom the presidency of Richard M. Nixon is roiling that administration. But it’s not the only breach of public trust dogging the Nixon White House....

How Americans lost their schools and how to take them back

Our schools are a mess, and parents are ing increasingly fed up, willing to challenge teachers and school boards. The question remains, challenge them to do what? A new book offers some answers. Read More… In mencement speech at Kenton College, American writer David Foster Wallace started with an anecdote, “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

The Roots of Law

Some may consider a discussion about the roots of law needless. Don't we already know the roots of law? If I were to poll Christians, asking, “Where do we find the roots of law?,” no doubt the overwhelming majority would reply, “in the Bible—in the law of God.” And I agree that the roots of law are more perfectly presented in the Word of God than in any other book. But knowing this is not enough. Not in the...

Oct 14, 2026

The Delusion of Darwinian Natural Law

In a short, inconspicuous paragraph in the conclusion to the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin speculates that “in the distant future … psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.“ One hundred and forty years later, Darwin's eerie prediction about the revolutionary effect of his work on human beings' self-understanding seems all too prophetic. After a century of dissemination, the once-novel theory...

Oct 14, 2026

Reading Centesimus Annus

Grasping the authentic significance of Centesimus Annus requires two approaches. First, one must read the encyclical on its own merits, independently of previous papal teaching. As objectively as possible, one can exegete its various passages to discern its thrust and priorities. Then one must read the document in the context of previous social pronouncements by the magisterium over the past one hundred years and see what new themes, developments, and directions the present encyclical initiates. When read for its...

Oct 14, 2026

Centesimus Annus Turns Ten

This year marks the tenth anniversary of John Paul II's most important social encyclical, Centesimus Annus. Taking its name from the first two words of the Latin text, the title means “the hundredth anniversary” and is a reference to Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical on the condition of the working classes. Rerum Novarum was the most important social encyclical of Leo's pontificate, which lasted from 1878 to 1903. Rerum Novarum's moral insight into the social, economic, and...

Oct 14, 2026

Economics and Theology: A Wondrous Exchange

Attempts to write of one's own vocation often fall flat. A priest whom I know remarked recently on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, “The Lord could have chosen much better, he could have chosen much worse. He chose me.” That is every vocation in sum, and saying anything more often means just multiplying words. Every “vocation story” is an account of God whispering in an individual soul and, as such, it remains somehow inaccessible to others to...

Oct 14, 2026

Biography: Karol Wojtyla

“Freedom is offered to man and given to him as a task. He must not only possess it but also conquer it. He must recognize the work of his life in a good use, in an increasingly good use of his liberty. This is the truly essential, the fundamental work, on which the value and the sense of his whole life depend.” When Cardinal Karol Wojtyla pronounced these words during the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976, he articulated...

Oct 14, 2026

How Christianity Created Capitalism

Capitalism, it is usually assumed, flowered around the same time as the Enlightenment–the eighteenth century–and, like the Enlightenment, entailed a diminution of organized religion. In fact, the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was the main locus for the first flowerings of capitalism. Max Weber located the origin of capitalism in modern Protestant cities, but today’s historians find capitalism much earlier than that in rural areas, where monasteries, especially those of the Cistercians, began to rationalize economic life. It...

Oct 14, 2026

To Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts

Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest...

Oct 14, 2026

The Moral Dimensions of Monetary Policy

Before the turn of this century, an entire generation of preachers and ministers concluded that a moral monetary policy was an easy-money policy. “Give the people more money and credit,” was the cry of the populist ministers. “Down with gold, up with silver.” They mistakenly believed that the Treasury's printing press was the key to earthly salvation. Even as late as the 1940s, this ideology is evident in film. As much as I love the Christmas classic, It's a...

Oct 14, 2026

Enjoying and Making Use of a Responsible Freedom

Oct 14, 2026