For those who research and teach Catholic Social Thought, it should have been immediately apparent why the first-ever American pope, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, chose what appears to be an antiquated name in Leo XIV. Continue Reading...
Latest Posts
May 21, 2025
The Separation of Church and State Is Not an Argument Against School Choice
As school choice becomes the law of the land, particularly here in Texas, this has raised some fundamental questions on how much choice parents will be allowed to have. Not only are there many different pedagogies and teaching styles parents could conceivably prefer, but there is also a wide array of deeper guiding principles that inform instruction, many of which are explicitly religious. Continue Reading...
May 20, 2025
The Legacy of Nicaea and Church-State Entanglements
The Council of Nicaea, the First Ecumenical Council of the ancient and undivided Catholic Church, bequeathed to the world far more than the one universally accepted creed in Christian history, though that is no small feat. Continue Reading...
May 16, 2025
Pope Leo XIV and Orthodox Social Thought
The new pontiff of Rome has already set a tone for his papacy with the choice of his name:
I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. Continue Reading...
May 15, 2025
Faith at Work: The Difference ‘Calling’ Can Make
“The line between our work lives and personal lives has blurred,” observes the authors of Religion in a Changing Workplace. “Religious employees in the United States—in all types of occupations and sectors—feel more comfortable expressing their faith in the workplace and less comfortable leaving their faith behind when they go to work.” Continue Reading...
May 14, 2025
The Road Not Taken: A Russian Journey
In 1991, my family faced a choice for the first time: We could remain in Russia or take advantage of the temporarily loosened borders and immigrate to Israel.
There was a significant hurdle to overcome, however. Continue Reading...
May 13, 2025
The Summer of 1940 and the Fate of Western Civilization
There have been pivotal battles that, had they gone another way, would have changed the direction of Western history: John Sobieski’s victory over the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Washington’s stand at Valley Forge, Wellington’s triumph at Waterloo, but none was as critical for the fate of Western civilization as the events that transpired over the summer and early fall of 1940. Continue Reading...
May 08, 2025
America’s New ‘Reshoring’ Policy: A Warning from Hungary
When Donald Trump campaigned on the grand promise to bring blue-collar manufacturing jobs back to the United States, I knew I had seen and heard this before. As a former Hungarian Member of Parliament from a small town, mainly boasting factories with assembly lines that serve car manufacturers, I had seen how this brand of campaign rhetoric serves only a short-term political interest but does not serve the country’s future. Continue Reading...
May 07, 2025
Pope 267: The Guessing Game
The excitement in Rome is palpable about who’s papabile as the historic conclave that will elect the 267th successor to Peter gets underway. A first fumata nera (black smoke) has blown barely visible at twilight above the Sistine Chapel, ensuring long nights of ongoing debate at the many restaurants immediately adjacent to the Vatican. Continue Reading...
May 07, 2025
What Is Marriage?
In 2014, Anthony Esolen published Defending Marriage, responding to the effort to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. In it, he argues that the fight over redefining marriage was lost long before this specific policy battle, when we began to lose sight of marriage as a permanent, exclusive, fruitful bond between husband and wife. Continue Reading...
