Michael Novak

The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor Harvard University Press, 142 pages, $17.95 To grow up in Canada is to inherit a privileged position for understanding modernity”sufficently distant from that hurtling spaceship of “the republic to our south,” while retaining (perhaps . . . . Continue Reading »

When Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, visited Pope John Paul II in May 1992, the two church leaders discussed the probable future ordination of women priests in the Anglican Church. That, the Pope said, “touched on the very nature of the sacrament of holy orders.” A . . . . Continue Reading »

Shall we look for the deepest impulse toward that monstrosity”Christians who are anti-Semites? They are seeking an alibi for their innermost sense of guilt, for the death of Christ of which they want to clear themselves: but if Christ did not die for their sins, then they flee from the mercy . . . . Continue Reading »

There they go again. The presidential election of 1992 is bringing out among politicians and the media the Big Economic Lie. Virtually all editors today allow their reporters to broadcast this lie uncritically: “During the 1980s under Reaganomics the poor and the middle class lost . . . . Continue Reading »

Among the far-reaching effects of the great antisocialist revolutions of 1989 is one that has so far not received a proper measure of attention, and that is their impact on Latin American liberation theology At least one liberation theologian, observing the collapse of the socialist dream in Eastern . . . . Continue Reading »

When we come to measure the success of a presidency, it matters a great deal whether the administration in question made life better or worse for the poor. A culture whose values spring from Judaism, Christianity, and a compassionate humanism cannot be satisfied unless the poor are well cared for. . . . . Continue Reading »

Although the twentieth century was often proclaimed by the church to be the “Age of the Laity,” it remains true that most Catholic discourse is still taken up with the words of popes, bishops, priests, and sisters. Nonetheless, as in the nineteenth century so in the twentieth, a number . . . . Continue Reading »

In his famous Postscript to The Constitution of Liberty,Friedrich von Hayek identified Thomas Aquinas as “the first Whig,” and has several times since noted how important it is to distinguish the Whig tradition from that of many exponents of the classical liberal tradition. Among . . . . Continue Reading »