responsibility

August 01, 2011

The Privilege of Responsibility

This past weekend in Chicago a luncheon was held for the kickoff of college football’s Big 10 Conference. Michigan State University quarterback, Kirk Cousins, was featured at the conference, giving an honorary talk on his journey through four years in college football, and the important lessons he took away from his experience. Continue Reading...

March 29, 2011

Amity Shlaes on Thrift and Calvin Coolidge

Thrift almost seems like a lost virtue among much of our governing class. It is also true of the general population. We don’t have to just look at our staggering public debt, but consumer credit card debt tells the story too. Continue Reading...

July 09, 2009

A Theory of Gift, Duty, and Rights Based on Caritas in Veritate

One of Pope Benedict XVI’s great emphases in his new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is the idea of gift. A gift is something that we have received without earning. As the Pope wisely notes, “The human being is made for gift,” even though man is often “wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society.” Continue Reading...

June 29, 2009

Sin, Responsibility, and the Fall of Bernie Madoff

Only if there are new human beings will there be a new world, a renewed and better world. When the Pope said these words at Vespers on Sunday, perhaps he had Bernie Madoff in mind. Continue Reading...

February 02, 2009

The ‘P’ Word

This guy fails the ‘anthropological Rorshach’ test: Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. Continue Reading...

December 01, 2008

The Economic Blame Game

Yesterday’s Grand Rapids Press had an attention-grabbing feature graphic, which highlights an online interactive “game” that gives more information about each of the candidates for the “economic blame game” bracket. Press Graphic/Milt Klingensmith The four brackets are broken down by group, so the four major categories at fault are 1) the financial industry; 2) consumers; 3) government; and 4) inexplicable forces. Continue Reading...

November 07, 2008

10 Questions on Economics and Morality

Posted at the Center for a Just Society (notice courtesy the National Humanities Institute), Dr. Mark T. Mitchell asks a series of questions focused on the intersection between morality and economics in light of the recent financial crisis. Continue Reading...

September 29, 2008

Pols behaving badly

Last week an email newsletter from Sojourners featured a quote from U2 rock star and activist Bono (courtesy the American Prospect blog): It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases. Continue Reading...

September 29, 2008

Personal responsibility and self-possession

There is an old expression, “Talk is cheap.” Coupled with another old expression, “Actions speak louder than words,” we are introduced to a profound philosophical insight brought by Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) in his The Acting Person. Continue Reading...

January 10, 2008

Respect for Those Who Come After

Alan Donagan, the moral philosopher, in his text The Theory of Morality reflects upon Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make mankind in our image…”). This text can be seen, he writes, as an affirmation that the earth and all that is on it exist for the sake of the rational beings who live in it; that is, for the sake of man. Continue Reading...

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