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MacIntyre’s Missing Pages

In his preface to the second edition of A Short History of Ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre notes the absurdity of his attempt to treat Christian ethics in a mere ten pages sandwiched “between 109 pages on Greek ethics and 149 pages on Western European ethics” from the Renaissance onward… . Continue Reading »

Haiti, Stingy America, and Kristof

The earthquake and disaster in Haiti immediately brought to my mind the Christmas Tsunami of 2004. Some may remember that when that horrific event struck, President George W. Bush immediately dispatched naval (and other) assistance and committed $350 million dollars (pdf) to relief efforts, to start… . Continue Reading »

Art Through Thick and Thin

There could be no starker”or more revealing”contrast than the exhibitions at London’s major museums this winter: “Pop Life: Art in a Material World” at Tate Britain and “The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700” at the National Gallery… . Continue Reading »

Tsunami and Theodicy
01.15.2010
David B. Hart

Tens of thousands of Haitians have already died in the wake of the devastating earthquake on Tuesday, and tens of thousands more are threatened by disease and a lack of food and clean water. We thought this would be an appropriate moment to revisit David B. Hart’s essay from the March 2005 issue of First Things, written in light of the tsunami that devastated the South Asian coastline in December 2004… . Continue Reading »

Tsunami and Theodicy: Haiti

(Tens of thousands of Haitians have already died in the wake of the devastating earthquake on Tuesday, and tens of thousands more are threatened by disease and a lack of food and clean water. We thought this would be an appropriate moment to revisit David B. Hart’s essay from the March 2005 issue of First Things, written in light of the tsunami that devastated the South Asian coastline in December 2004.) Continue Reading »

Seven (or Eight) Deadly Sins

In recent decades, the familiar list of seven deadly sins drawn up by the Church has become attractive to writers who wish to combine personal glimpses with sociological and moral insight; I think Henry Fairlie of The New Republic was the first modern journalist to try his hand at the genre. Why this rubric has become fashionable is a question in itself. Seven Deadly Sins: A Very Partial List is Aviad Kleinberg’s current entry… . Continue Reading »

Wrangling on Liturgy

A few days ago Inside Catholic re-ran a piece of mine from 2007, wherein I related personal experiences with “old” and “new” Catholic liturgy. It was a gentle essay that concluded in the hope that Catholics could find a way to bring the best parts of past and present liturgies together and weave them into a marvelous whole cloth upon which we might all stand “as we wait in joyful hope, for the coming of the Lord.” … Continue Reading »

Obama’s Niebuhrian Moment (Part II)

Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech can be read as a concise restatement of Reinhold Niebuhr’s political ethics as a guide to U.S. foreign policy for the twenty-first century. The major themes in Niebuhr’s thinking found powerful resonance in the speech, in which an American president in a new century reasserted, as the doctrinal basis of his foreign policy, the cherished political theology of America’s two major parties for most of the past century… . Continue Reading »

Obama’s Niebuhrian Moment (Part I)

In his December 10, 2009, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, President Barack Obama offered a vigorous defense of the just war tradition in response to problems of evil and injustice in the world. More than this, however, he offered a moral vision that closely followed, without any direct reference, the ideas of perhaps the most influential American theologian of the twentieth century… . Continue Reading »

He Is Not Here

The past year has not been abundant with fortune for the world or our nation”which made it precisely a time when one ached for commentary from Richard John Neuhaus. We waited, by an instinct that thought he would reply quickly. But there was an uncharacteristic silence.… . Continue Reading »

An Anniversary
01.08.2010
Robert Louis Wilken

In 1961, Richard John Neuhaus was installed as pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Brooklyn. Several days later he wrote me. “Installed Misericordias Domini”much pomp, ceremony, and incense.” It was the last word I heard from him for almost six months… . Continue Reading »

An Anniversary

In 1961, Richard John Neuhaus was installed as pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Brooklyn. Several days later he wrote me. “Installed Misericordias Domini”much pomp, ceremony, and incense.” It was the last word I heard from him for almost six months. It was as though he had been swallowed up by the city and his new congregation. For Fr. Richard as well as for the people of St. John’s the day of installation was a glorious occasion… . Continue Reading »

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