Foreign Affairs
On June 2, 1979, a philosopher-pope spoke in Warsaw and the world tilted. Karol Wojtyła’s homily restored the human person to history, turning faith into moral resistance. In a single afternoon, words—not weapons—shifted the course of the Cold War.
Freedom
Forgiveness is no easy grace—it is the hardest freedom, wrested from pain itself. It asks the unimaginable: that hurt might yield to mercy. Yet time and again, from the crucifixion to South Africa’s rebirth, it has made the impossible possible.
Breaking with Marx
From Leo XIII to John Paul II, the Church has stood with the poor—yet never by confusing justice with class struggle or dignity with enforced equality. Its vision affirms persons, not classes: for the poor, yes; for Marx, no.
Freedom
Augustine’s “city of pilgrims” and Oakeshott’s “resident strangers” remind us: democracy is no utopia, but a fragile order of wayfarers. Its strength lies not in perfection, but in patience, compromise, and trust.
Faith and Reason
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1831). The
Breaking with Marx
How one of the 20th century’s most radical philosophers abandoned Marxist utopianism for Aristotelian tradition and Thomistic faith. "I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?"
Faith and Reason
How a 12th-century dialogue between two great Muslim thinkers continues to shape the region’s choices today. A Debate That Still Resonates In the late eleventh century, the great theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali published Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). It was a masterful critique of those who, influenced
Faith and Reason
Catholic teaching defends conscience not as relativism but as liberty’s foundation: truth can only be embraced freely. Liberty makes room for truth; truth gives liberty its purpose.