Natural Law

May 02, 2019

The dangers of Catholic anti-liberalism

Korey D. Maas, associate professor of history at Hillsdale College, has written a timely warning to American Catholics at Public Discourse titled, ‘The Coming Anti-Catholicism.’ Maas begins his essay with a recounting of the early history of American anti-Catholicism, its mitigation in the 1960s, and its troubling resurgence in recent years: The combined effects of Camelot and the Council were to make political anti-Catholicism gauche almost overnight. Continue Reading...

April 17, 2019

New video of Rev. Robert Sirico: ‘Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy’

Earlier this month Fr. Robert Sirico delivered an address to the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley titled, ‘Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy’. The talk begins with an account of a formative childhood experience which first kindled in him a passion for justice. Continue Reading...

April 16, 2019

How Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ misunderstands Christian liberalism

Rod Dreher is once again exasperated. He is frustrated by a rumor that George Weigel hasn’t bought the tireless promotion of his ‘Benedict Option’: A few months ago, Weigel appeared at an event in Providence, RI, to discuss the Benedict Option. Continue Reading...

April 08, 2019

The seven moral rules of cooperation that unite humanity

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul affirms that Gentiles have the law “written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). Since then there has been a constant debate about what constitutes the natural law (i.e., Continue Reading...

March 11, 2019

Socialists cannot divorce good intentions from sound economics

Corey Robin has contributed an interesting essay to the Boston Review’s forum ‘Economics After Neoliberalism’. I am reluctant to enter into debates on, “Neoliberalism”, a term so nebulous and variegated in its usage as to render it useless as anything other than an all-purpose cudgel with which to browbeat others in middlebrow magazines (See Phil Magness on its pejorative origins). Continue Reading...

March 04, 2019

How to talk and listen towards a free and virtuous society

Reading Dylan Pahman’s recent piece, Don’t write off young ‘socialists’, got me thinking about talking and listening. We all talk and listen, with varying degrees of success, every day. Most of the time I do each well enough to muddle through learning something from others while imparting some sliver of wisdom in between boisterous declarations of my opinions and preferences. Continue Reading...

January 25, 2019

St. Philip Neri on the Covington Catholic boys

The sinister and irreparable nature of gossip is memorably illustrated in the penance St. Philip Neri once gave to a woman who had confessed it to him. He told her to walk through the streets of Rome plucking a chicken. Continue Reading...

January 16, 2019

Homeschooling a parent’s choice, not the state’s

Decades ago, when I was first ordained a priest, I shared a prejudice that many people hold: I thought homeschooling families were odd. I believed schooling children at home deprived such children of opportunities to be with other children causing them to be less able to communicate with others, socially awkward and reclusive and narrow in their experience and understanding of the world that they would one day have to grow up in and navigate. Continue Reading...

January 11, 2019

Samuel Gregg: Bringing natural law to the nations

“If sovereign states ordered their domestic affairs in accordance with principles of natural law,” says Acton research director Samuel Gregg at Law & Liberty, “the international sphere would benefit greatly.” During periods of resurgent national feeling, it’s common for enthusiasts of liberal international order and human rights activists to begin emphasizing the importance of international law and the way they think it should guide and restrain the choices of nations. Continue Reading...

January 09, 2019

The particular genius of conservatism

The U.S. Constitution is a work of both the historical experience of the Founding Fathers and of the eminently Protestant culture to which they belonged. It is probably futile to try to understand the legal meaning of the Constitution without first grasping its historical and cultural significance. Continue Reading...

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