It seems that Mitt Romney took up —-though admittedly in a private gathering—-the dangerously misleading statistic about how 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes. I pushed back against this last year after Tom Neven wrote a misguided First Thoughts post on the subject. . . . . Continue Reading »
On September 11, 2012 Beeson Divinity School dean Dr. Timothy George offered a talk called “Loving the Least of These” for the Pastoral Praxis for Life conference. . . . . Continue Reading »
This may seem counter intuitive, but a lawsuit filed in California against Health Net Insurance, for allegedly denying coverage for life-saving medical treatment, illustrates the danger of single payer health coverage. First, the story from the L.A. County Medical Association Press . . . . Continue Reading »
In the midst of both anti-Muslim and anti-Christian sentiments making their way through the media after the recent events in Libya, Yemen, and Egypt, Pope Benedict XVI offers hope for peace and unity, speaking to Catholics, Muslims, and visitors from Syria in his address to the youth in Lebanon . . . . Continue Reading »
The Latin rite of the Catholic Church is today celebrating the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), a Renaissance Jesuit and cardinal, who most notoriously was one of the Inquisitors who condemned Giordano Bruno to be burned at the stake in 1600 and was involved in the first summoning of . . . . Continue Reading »
This weekend’s New York Times Book Review features a critical treatment of Hannah Rosin’s The End of Men . Though there’s presumably no coordination between the book review and the op-ed pages, it still makes for a nice counter to David Brooks’ unfortunate . . . . Continue Reading »
Everyone tends to make fun of the young conservatives who dress like dandies, drink port, go high church, and profess to be monarchists. Not me. First of all, in those rare souls who can pull it off , the effect is sublime. More importantly, even the most callow, self-parodic monarchist phase . . . . Continue Reading »
R.R. Reno on Ryan outrage syndrome : We saw it with George W. Bush. Liberals would lose all sense of balance and proportion, falling into patterns of bitter denunciation. Now it seems to be happening with Paul Ryan. A recent issue of the New Republic features an extended tirade of sorts in which . . . . Continue Reading »
Last week I discussed how the Euro crisis can be understood at the cultural level as a conflict between two ethics: northern European bourgeois prudence on the one hand and southern European extravagance—-the sort of extravagance that gave us Bernini and St. Teresa of Avila—-on the . . . . Continue Reading »
It is no secret that the USA is the most charitable country in the world. Why? Well, we can be, but Dan Palotta of the WSJ points to tradition through our Puritan heritage and says charity was their response to the tensions within their doctrine, “they could do penance for their . . . . Continue Reading »
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