Jacques Maritain

May 23, 2023

Don’t Divinize the State

One consequence of what Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce calls our present “age of secularization” is the paradoxical modern tendency of atheists to divinize politics and the state. What the Church once undid, ideology would rejoin. Continue Reading...

April 28, 2023

Jacques Maritain and Art for Beauty’s Sake

On this particular day … we had just said to one another that if our nature was so unhappy as to possess only a pseudo-intelligence capable of everything but the truth, if, sitting in judgment on itself, it had to debase itself to such a point, then we could neither think nor act with any dignity. Continue Reading...

September 29, 2021

For religion to be national, it must first be personal

What does it mean for a nation to be Christian? Does the United States of America fit the description? At its founding, the United States was undoubtedly a Christian nation. To foster a society of religious freedom and pluralism, the Founding Fathers intentionally did not establish a national religion and took care to separate the domains of church and state in the founding documents of our country. Continue Reading...

September 20, 2017

Czeslaw Milosz: Poet Laureate of Freedom

[A review of Milosz: A Biography by Andrzej Franasszek, edited and translated by Aleksandra and Michael Parker, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge University, 2017, 526 pp., $35] “What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people?” Continue Reading...

November 08, 2013

Kirk, Acton, and the Imperishable Tradition

As noted earlier this week on the PowerBlog, 2013 marks the 60th publication anniversary of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. This monumental work’s significance derives from its encapsulation of several centuries of conservative thought – fragments, to borrow liberally from T.S. Continue Reading...

January 22, 2013

Samuel Gregg: Please put Tocqueville, Maritain on reading list, Mr. President

National Review Online asked Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg to weigh in on President Barack Obama’s second term inaugural address. Gregg points to “our president’s worldview that the government is the primary way in which we address our common problems and realize our responsibilities and obligations to each other as citizens and as human beings.” Continue Reading...

March 05, 2011

Archbishop Chaput: The American experience and global religious liberty

A brilliant assessment of where we are. (HT: American Orthodox Institute Observer). Subject to the governor of the universe: The American experience and global religious liberty March 1, 2011 – Most Rev. Continue Reading...