Today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker:
Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being”.
For the rest of this encyclical, Laborem Exercens, click here.
While doing research for my upcoming lecture at the Drexel University Libraries’ Scholarly Commmunication Symposium, I ran across this excellent book by Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Free Press, 1997). Dr. Murray at that time was a professor at MIT and is now at Georgia Tech.
The name Robespierre is synonymous with terror and mass murder. But the author of The Terror that accompanied the French Revolution was also the prototype of the revolutionary leader who would become all too familiar in the 20th Century. Robespierre loosed the hordes of hell on his people, utterly convinced that he was preserving the purity of his political movement. In the current City Journal, John Kekes offers a fascinating analysis of Robespierre, the man, and those who have since adopted his method. “Why Robespierre Chose Terror” also looks at the way “reasonable” people filter ideologies by subjecting them to a healthy skepticism:
A former editor at First Things, Damon Linker, has written a piece for The New Republic, which attacks, among others, his former boss, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Linker claims that Neuhaus is a “theocon,” who wants to merge religious authority and political power.
Who said liberation theology was dead?
If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend the film I Am David with Jim Caviezel and Ben Tibber. It is about a young boy, David, who escapes from a Bulgarian Prison Camp and undertakes a journey northward to Denmark. It is based on the children’s novel North to Freedom by Ann Holm.
This is an article worth reading by Steven Waldman in the Washington Monthly, “The Framers and the Faithful: How modern evangelicals are ignoring their own history.” The article examines the attitudes of many 18th century evangelicals toward government, and specifically with respect to a number of the founding fathers, including Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry.
Henry Stob, the longtime professor of philosophical and moral theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, authored a compendium of articles on various aspects of theological ethics in his 1978 book titled, Ethical Reflections: Essays on Moral Themes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). The book is now out of print, but I ran across an excellent section that excellently captures the intent of the work of the Acton Institute.
A snippet from the upcoming Religion & Liberty:
It is true that democracy is the best of the political systems, in that it guarantees, through universal suffrage, a peaceful changeover of power. But democracy and its instrument, majority rule, is not a method to investigate the truth. –Rafael Termes
The blessings and responsibilities of a peaceful political system: something for a free people to remember on this noteworthy day in March.
If you think the justice system lacks a sense of humor, you better reappraise that thinking. Exhibit A: the 2-page opinion in a recent bankruptcy court motion in San Antonio (PDF). Be sure to read the footnote on page 2. “Deciphering motions like the one presented here wastes valuable chamber staff time, and invites this sort of footnote.” Classic.
