Remembering Ronald Reagan’s Compassion

By |2023-02-05T19:54:32-06:00February 5th, 2023|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Charity, Politics, Ronald Reagan, Timeless Essays|

Ronald Reagan had a deep and abiding faith in the prudence and wisdom of people at the grass roots level to manage their own lives well, if left free from government intrusion. Is the government an appropriate venue for compassion and charity? Reagan’s answer was no. He believed the private sector does a better job. [...]

Clarity as Charity

By |2021-01-25T16:17:08-06:00January 25th, 2021|Categories: Charity, Christianity, Philosophy, Reason|

Critical theorists seek to confuse concepts through the manipulation of language and promote ideas that fail to correspond to reality. Academic theories designed to confuse rather than to clarify must be confronted with calm reason. This is the most charitable thing we can do for those who will come after us. Self-evident Truths It can [...]

Is Christianity in America Subservient to Capitalism?

By |2020-07-16T20:13:27-05:00July 16th, 2020|Categories: Capitalism, Charity, Christianity, Economics, George Stanciu, Labor/Work, Modernity, Senior Contributors|

The silence from the pulpit about the low-wage workers, 44% of the population, is disgraceful, although understandable, because Christianity in America has rarely challenged the ethos of capitalism. As a result, churches have virtually no role in political or economic life. The COVID-19 Pandemic has revealed that we no longer have the equivalent of such [...]

The Challenge of Goodness in George MacDonald’s “Sir Gibbie”

By |2019-08-29T11:20:52-05:00August 29th, 2019|Categories: Books, Charity, Christine Norvell, Fiction, Literature, Morality, Senior Contributors, Virtue|

In “Sir Gibbie,” George MacDonald shows us how goodness is not in action only, but also in the doer first. The virtuous person sees truly, judges rightly, and acts. It is the love of God within Gibbie that prompts him to do so. Sometimes you read a book that causes you to marvel at the [...]

Unity in Difference: Language-Learning & God’s Kingdom

By |2019-08-10T22:07:13-05:00August 10th, 2019|Categories: Charity, Christianity, Culture, Education, Language, Literature|

Learning another language helps me to not only understand, but to better experience first-hand how another person thinks, feels, and interacts with the world; this creates the possibility for empathy, fellow-feeling, and ultimately, charity. Having taught high-school Spanish for the first time last fall, I have been wondering why it is that we teach foreign [...]

Illiberal Lessons Learned Along the Way

By |2019-07-03T13:39:52-05:00January 15th, 2019|Categories: Charity, Culture War, Joseph Mussomeli, Modernity, Morality, Senior Contributors, Virtue, Worldview|

I keep reminding myself to look beneath and beyond labels and remain focused on the individual. Because ultimately it is the individual who matters most and who is most deserving of praise or condemnation, affection or disdain. It is a surprisingly hard lesson to learn and to remember given the current political and cultural tensions [...]

Mercy as a Reality Illuminated by Reason

By |2022-08-10T15:51:45-05:00December 26th, 2018|Categories: Catholicism, Charity, Christian Humanism, Communio, David L. Schindler, Pope Francis|

In his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium [EG], Pope Francis insists that we need to anchor our approach to the Church’s missionary task in the Incarnate Word as the principle of reality (“il criterio di realtà”: 233). This principle can be a guide for “the development of life in society and the building of a people,” [...]

Do You Desire True Liberty? Then Let the Children Live!

By |2019-03-07T11:13:58-06:00December 18th, 2018|Categories: Abortion, Catholicism, Charity, Christianity, Mother of God|

St. John the Baptist came to prepare the way of the Lord by proclaiming the Good News of the coming of the Redeemer, and by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. According to Abba Apollo, a desert father who lived about 1,700 years ago, the devil has no knees. He had them [...]

Reductio ad Machinam: Human Identity in the Age of Machines

By |2019-08-01T23:57:35-05:00December 9th, 2018|Categories: Character, Charity, Community, Compassion, Conservatism, Culture, Imagination, Modernity|

"Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence…. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an [...]

Civility and Noblesse Oblige

By |2018-11-13T14:08:15-06:00November 12th, 2018|Categories: Character, Charity, Christian Living, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

Noblesse oblige is more than merely being civil. In a Christian context, it treats those less talented or less fortunate without a show of superiority because it recognizes that they, too, are made in the image and likeness of God… What it means to be “civil” has undergone severe scrutiny lately. Hillary Clinton, for example, [...]

What If? The Moral Imagination of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”

By |2017-08-31T12:02:36-05:00July 27th, 2017|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Charity, Christianity, Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Film, Moral Imagination, Senior Contributors|

The story of Beauty and the Beast is the oldest story in the Christian world. It’s the story about love, sacrifice, and redemption… Several nights ago, I reluctantly watched Disney’s 2017 live version of Beauty and the Beast. I must admit three things before I get into the heart of this essay. First, I’ve never [...]

Charles Dickens and an Incomplete Ideal

By |2024-02-06T20:03:21-06:00June 29th, 2017|Categories: Character, Charity, Charles Dickens, Literature, Love, Marriage|

Through reading the works of Charles Dickens, we may be inspired to take a closer look at our own priorities and come to a deeper understanding of our inability to embody perfectly our own ideals. Throughout the career of the esteemed literary giant Charles Dickens, selfless love as opposed to selfishness served as an underlying [...]

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