In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI makes a surprising claim about integral human development: “The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family.” What are we to make of this claim? It is neither a policy prescription nor a partisan
Liberalism is generally thought to be first and foremost a political theory. In a specifically historical sense this is correct. Liberalism arrives on the scene in the work of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, with the aim of making societies dependent on social contract theory. Yet, today liberalism has become
Division is an all-pervasive affliction in the contemporary world. In a country like the United States we are often tempted to admit that we live under no shared dominant cultural model. Instead, we are torn from allegiance to allegiance in a matrix of mutually contradictory partisan groups unhappily mingled under one
Alasdair MacIntyre maintains that action falls within the context of a community. But what happens when the duties of one’s station conflict with each other? How do “communities” relate to each other? What place does MacIntyre grant to international relations? What should we do when communities decide to come to
For nearly a half-century, abortion has been one of the most polarizing and contested issues in American politics. The leak of Justice Alito’s majority draft opinion in the Dobbs case has occasioned bleak speculation from abortion rights advocates about what the perils of a post-Roe world might look like, especially
I have heard the phrase “Christians are being persecuted” in the context of American politics enough times in the last few years to know that it has become a piece of folk wisdom. I have seen the tendency to view persecution as confirmation in political discourse in America, particularly in
Some two years ago, I attended the Called and Co-Responsible conference at the University of Notre Dame. It was a conference about the role of the laity in the Church. One of the speakers, Fr. Michael Sweeny, O.P. made two insightful statements in his talk that resonated deeply with my