The tyranny of misunderstood freedom
That’s the name of a piece I have up at Catholic World Report.
Catholicism
Reason and religion
Four religions:
- Liberalism: A single human world ordered only by reason, based on pure (content-free) concepts. Freedom says you ignore the content of human goals and promote all of them simply as such, and equality says you ignore the content of human qualities so you treat all men as equal in value. Put them together
How is Professor Epstein unlike the Pope?
Richard Epstein has an online piece entitled How Is Warren Buffett Like the Pope?
It seems that on the way to Spain for World Youth Day the Pope said that the economy “cannot be measured by the maximum profit but by the common good,” and that it “cannot function only with mercantile self-regulation but needs … More ...
Escape from the antiworld
Here’s the text of a lecture I presented at the 2011 Roman Forum conference at Lake Garda in Italy:
Escape from the Antiworld
James Kalb
Presented at the Roman Forum conference in Gardone Riviera, Italy,
July 6, 2011
This conference raises a variety of questions. What is the present situation? How should we deal with … More ...
Warum gibt es keinen Traditionalismus in den USA?
Tradition makes us what we are. The institutions that are dominant today want to make us more manageable as human resources, so they destroy all traditions but those of consumerist careerism. The latter, of course, include pluralism and inclusiveness.
People usually don’t like it when things that are close to them are attacked for … More ...
Inclusiveness and Catholicism
[The seventh in a series on inclusiveness.]
The Catholic view of the world has lasted a long time and supported many good things, so the Catholic view of antidiscrimination and inclusiveness ought to matter to anyone interested in those topics.
But what is “the Catholic view”? The phrase can refer to anything from the … More ...
Of paper tigers and pontiffs
The Easter offensive against the Church has been unusually aggressive this year, and it’s lasting longer than usual. A sober response is naturally in order, and there are those who are providing it, but at bottom the attacks don’t bother me that much. Some reasons:
- The Church is well-founded. It has an explanation for what
Where was the Church?
A blast from the past: a group of working-class Catholic mothers, protesting against an obvious gross violation of Catholic social teaching regarding subsidiarity and the primary authority and responsibility of parents for the education of their children, pray the rosary on their knees. Then the cops go after them. The local bishop must have … More ...