By Joseph R. Wood

My summer philosophical reading includes two Thomases: St. Thomas Aquinas, who needs no introduction here, and Thomas Nagel, New York University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus. He is an atheist of Jewish descent.

Whatever you read in the next few paragraphs, don't believe that Nagel is a quasi-Catholic philosopher. His book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, has to be enjoyed on his own terms.

Nagel succinctly rejects the "reductive materialism" - the notion that all of reality can be explained by material processes moving through time with no given end (telos) - that is "widely assumed to be the only serious possibility."

The natural sciences are dominated by the insistence that "the physical sciences could in principle provide a theory of everything." Under this view (often acting as an ideology), all reality can be reduced to matter and the principles by which its interactions unfold.

Nagel admires the physical sciences as they seek to understand reality within their domains. But he rejects the possibility that material causes alone could bring into being animals with consciousness and reason. He labels such theories "causal" explanations of what is.

He sees in the universe a place where "mind is not just an afterthought or an accident or an add-on, but a basic aspect of nature." Consciousness and reason are not outcomes of strictly material Darwinian evolution. Rather, they point to a telos in the order of things that guides or directs evolution and the development of the universe.

This is a "teleological" explanation of reality. One kind of teleological view is theist, with God invoked as the propagator of the telos, or as the telos Himself.

Nagel is sympathetic to the arguments of those theists who, accepting an intelligent design of creation, point out logical and evidential flaws of materialist reduction theories. These arguments are often dismissed as unworthy of consideration merely because they are religious.

The reigning material Darwinists "are armed to the teeth against arguments from religion." The objections to material reductionism are, says Nagel, worthy of consideration on logical and philosophical grounds. But the materialists close their ears for no sound reason.

Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems these iconoclasts [critics of materialist reductionism] pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.

When I see an atheist philosopher referring to the "orthodox scientific consensus" as an icon and its religious critics as unfairly maligned "iconoclasts," I know I'm reading an interesting book. I'd like to have listened to Nagel chat with Chesterton.

Nagel says a great deal about why the materialist explanations fail to explain consciousness and reason. But he's circumspect about why the theist teleological explanation - God - doesn't convince him. He comments that he lacks "the sensus divinitatis that enables - indeed compels - so many people to see in the world the expression of divine purposes as naturally as they see in a smiling face the expression of human feeling." He himself is even "strongly averse to the idea" of theism.

That is one example of what a lovely book this is. Nagel writes with clarity, occasional humor, and generosity. He treats those of different views seriously and respectfully, often having interesting arguments. He acknowledges the importance of individual inclinations in how we see the world. The book moves along with charity and humility.

His penchant for common sense is welcome.

If causal and theist explanations of reality don't work for Nagel, what explains "what is"? He is drawn to a natural (versus supernatural) teleology in which the telos of the universe is embedded within nature itself (but not put the...

By Stephen P. White

Human beings, having a rational nature, are free to choose between good and evil. This freedom constitutes, in the words of Pope Leo XIII, "the highest of natural endowments." We are not only free to choose between good and evil, but we are also responsible for those choices. We are responsible for the intentions by which we act, for the actions themselves, and, to some degree, for the consequences of those actions.

Our laws account for all three of these facets of moral action, which is why we distinguish, for example, between murder and manslaughter in criminal cases, and sometimes award damages in wrongful death cases even if no criminal offense was proven.

Even outside of the legal context, we Christians often think of moral actions in terms of culpability, that is, in terms of guilt or innocence. And there is good reason for this. We know that we will be judged by our actions and judged by One who knows not just our outward actions but our very hearts: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

There is much more, however, to our moral actions than culpability. Our free choice to do good or to do evil does much more than impute guilt or innocence on account of which we are liable to judgment.

Our moral choices, in a limited but crucial way, make us who we are. Man is not only capable of choosing between good and evil, he is capable of choosing to make himself good or evil.

God does not change, though we do. We are never simply static. Of course, we change physically over time. Our bodies grow, age, and die. Some changes are irreversible: our coming into being as a unique and immortal creation, for example, is irrevocable (though not of our own choosing). Grace changes us, too. Some sacraments even bring about a permanent change in the very nature of the one who receives them, what the Church calls an "ontological" change. Baptism accomplishes this. So does Holy Orders.

But we change in mind and spirit, too. We learn (and forget) things. We change in our moral habits as well, growing in virtue or chaining ourselves to vice. These are changes within ourselves that we do choose. Grace aids us, of course, but by the free choices we make, we become more and more (or less and less, as the case may be) the men and women we were created to be.

The whole drama of every human life plays out between the person one is and the person one is becoming. Human freedom is precisely that gift by which, through obedience to the truth and with the assistance of grace, man is able to act in such a way as to grow in the excellence for which he was made.

This teleological understanding of moral action and human freedom lies at the very heart of the Church's teaching about the human person and her understanding of the vocation of every person. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in Veritatis Splendor:

Human acts are moral acts because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who performs them. They do not produce a change merely in the state of affairs outside of man but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits.

This understanding of moral action is hardly new. The ancient Greeks understood it. The Church Fathers understood it. In fact, to underscore his earlier point, Pope John Paul II cites the great 4th-century saint, Gregory of Nyssa:

All things subject to change and to becoming never remain constant, but continually pass from one state to another, for better or worse. . . .Now, human life is always subject to change; it needs to be born ever anew. . . .But here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is the case with bodily beings. . .it is the result of a free choice. Thus we are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as...

By Robert Royal

Pope Leo will have celebrated the new Mass for the Common Home (or Care of Creation, Missa pro custodia creationis) in Rome by the time this appears today. It isn't a radical recasting of the liturgy - on paper. It mostly just introduces several prayers reminding believers that God created the world and placed us here within the Garden "to cultivate and care for it."(Genesis 2:15) As with the controversies over the Traditional Latin Mass, however, the significance of the Creation Mass goes far beyond the bare words to deep questions.

This Mass clearly has been long in preparation, maybe ever since Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudato si' ("Care for Our Common Home"), though it was only announced, unexpectedly, on July 3, as was the first celebration only six days later. As with that encyclical, controversy is inevitable.

In the Christian tradition, Creation (not mere "nature," much less the reductive term "the environment") has often been described as God's second book of revelation, alongside the Bible, the first book, which gives us fuller understanding of precisely what it is that God made.

It's only very vaguely a "common home," at least since the Fall. We have here now "no abiding city." (Heb.13:14) Several recent popes have rightly emphasized our responsibility to care for what God has given. They less often have recognized the mortal struggle with nature that our forebears experienced. And we still do today. Floods (like the one that just carried off over a hundred people in Texas), droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wild animals, crop failures, diseases, and more.

As God said to Adam:

Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake;

in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. . .(Genesis 3:17-19)

As farmers and even gardeners know, weeds, insects, and other pests proliferate in the "natural" state now. Fruits and vegetables take careful and constant attention, including wise and strong measures against what is otherwise "natural." This perpetual human struggle usually gets lost in current "environmental" debates, even within the Church.

It's easier to ignore such truths now than in the past because the whole world today benefits from technological inventions, which have brought us great improvements in the availability of food, shelter, energy, and health. These gains have also brought considerable losses in harm to the land, oceans, air, and our very sense of our own bodies as part of God's world. (Being "born in the wrong body" makes no sense to anyone with a Biblical perspective.)

We've recently become more aware of the downside of the "progress" of recent centuries and less aware of the benefits. Pope Francis rightly wrote of how the loss of a sense of Creation makes us into rationalists and technologists, mere "masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters." (Laudato Si 11) He and other Churchmen, however, have tended to neglect the role of inventors, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs in producing goods and the means to distribute them.

At the Royal Portal to the Cathedral in Chartres, the arts and sciences are presented as repairing the damage done to Creation by the Fall. We would do well to recover that medieval perspective, alongside proper attention to technological harm, today.

At the same time, in a fallen world, populated by fallen human beings, all we can ever achieve is a precarious balance, amidst various tradeoffs. We live longer and physically better than in the past, but also more precariously. All it would take in our time is the failure of the electric grid or the disruption of the Internet or interruption of the flow of food and other goods from farm to city to produce chaos and death on a glo...

By Randall Smith.

Many of us know that we're supposed to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Christ. We might also know that Christ, although He is the Son of God and the Son of Man, the great messianic figure prophesied in Daniel (7:13-14), is also the "Suffering Servant," whose sufferings bring about our redemption, described in four "servant songs" in Isaiah. (42:1 - 53:12)

Knowing all this, we might still wonder: Why must we suffer? The large number of dead in the flash-flooding in Texas, where I live, for instance, raises the question anew. Why?

We don't want to turn Christianity into a cult of suffering - suffering for its own sake in a church for those "tough enough to take it." There are many things admirable about the Stoics, but a theology based on a Savior who weeps at the death of a friend and whose chief act is called "the Passion" is not, at heart, Stoic.

In Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, Jerry Cruncher wants his wife to stop "flopping" - going down on her knees to pray - because he thinks it will just bring more suffering and poverty, and he has enough of that already! Don't we all? So why does suffering play such a large part in Christian spirituality, given that suffering isn't something we naturally incline to, but painstakingly try to avoid?

The first thing we might point out is that, in St. Paul's letters, suffering is part of the "death to self" that is necessary because of our sinful selfishness. But our goal is to "rise with Christ." Still, let's not soft-pedal it. Putting others first before ourselves isn't easy. It's like a little "death," a death of the sinful self so that a selfless "self" can arise.

Consider how hard it is to go to someone you know you've violated or betrayed and say: "I am truly sorry." We like to feel big and confident, but saying "I'm sorry" can make one feel very small. What a jerk I was! It's hard. But necessary.

So too, in a fallen world filled with fallen people like you, other people will disappoint you. Before long, they'll screw up, and you will need to "take it" and not "pay it forward" to others. You may have experienced this when you get yelled at by your boss, so you go home and yell at your spouse, who then yells at the kids, who then go out and yell at their friends, who go home and kick the dog.

It just keeps rippling outward. Christians are called upon to be "circuit breakers" - to interrupt that vicious cycle of anger and abuse. But becoming a circuit breaker involves sacrifice and suffering. You have to take it without dishing it out. It can make you feel small - like a nobody - in a world of people who enjoy "lording it over" others.

Things will disappoint us. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you get the great job, sometimes you don't. If there were no chance of losing, there would be no challenge, no excitement, and no sense of attaining something significant. But there's no sugar coating it: losing hurts.

If you're not ready for that suffering, you'll probably just quit. One of the best things we can teach young people is not only how to set goals for themselves, but also how to react when they fail. Because in this world, they certainly will fail, probably a lot. They need to learn to embrace that suffering if they're ever going to rise again.

Sometimes suffering results from putting our hopes in the wrong things. In any state of existence shy of the Beatific Vision, nothing can fully satisfy us. The sooner we recognize that this is a source of our dissatisfaction, the sooner we can look for things that will truly satisfy and fulfill us. Suffering caused by the insufficiency of the world is often God's way of calling us back to Him, who alone can fulfill us.

There are other reasons we suffer. In this fallen world, being just or bringing about justice for others is rarely easy, nor are the sacrifices needed for temperance and courage. If justice were easy, everyone would be doing it. As it is, people who work for justi...

By John M. Grondelski .

The New York Times recently published an op-ed by Jessica Grose entitled "Motherhood Should Come with a Warning Label." A conservative poster on X tweeted about it as yet one more example of the Left's anti-motherhood bias.

Now I would not be surprised if Ms. Grose took that view, but in this case, it's not completely true. Yes, she feints left. But our politics are so polarized that people don't read very carefully (or maybe hope that you don't).

Catholic social thought (CST) is controversial because it does not fit comfortably in the political categories of "right" and "left." Ideological Catholicism from either side cherry-picks CST to further a political agenda. Real Catholicism lets faith shape one's politics.

Although it may gore the sacred oxen of those who worship at the altar of Adam Smith, the Grose essay has important things to say in support of CST. As one woman summed up Grose's thesis: "[O]ur society and economic systems are built off taking my labor as a mother for granted." That's the "motherhood penalty."

Money, of course, isn't everything - especially when it comes to having and raising children - but it's not nothing, either.

In his most famous encyclical, which inaugurated modern Catholic social doctrine, Pope Leo XIII spoke in 1891 of a living and just wage as one "sufficient to enable [a man] comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children. . .[and] by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings [for old age]." (Rerum novarum, 46)

He spoke of one person as the wage earner (per the custom of his time, the father) to support a family, i.e., feed and clothe them, put a roof over their heads, and squirrel something away for old age. These are not radical wants.

Any observer of modern America must admit that the Leonine vision is almost totally absent from our social policies and even our default assumptions about family life. To achieve the things Leo XIII deemed to be part of what a living wage should afford requires, in reality in today's America, two wage-earners.

The consequences for women are not insignificant. In practice, it means that dedication to raising one's children is out of reach for most mothers, except for a privileged few or those unusually committed to the task, despite the costs. And the consequences for stay-at-home moms are long-term: as Grose notes, they stretch "all the way to retirement."

Some conservatives will say that these consequences are a function of how women choose to work. They generally drop in and out of the job market and often prefer part-time work so that they may also spend time with their children. Their financial profile, therefore, differs from the classical model for men.

That much is true. But the catch in viewing things this way is that "work" by definition means paid economic activity outside the home. And economic activity inside the home in childrearing is regarded as not valuable. It's treated as not valuable because it carries no price tag. And, in a world where the mortgage does, like it or not, parenthood often becomes expendable.

A woman devoting a substantial part of her life to her children is not just not making money. She is actually paying for that devotion. She is financially penalized for being a mother.

She gets no wages in a society whose price structure presupposes two-wage earners. Without wages, she loses contributions in both time and money into Social Security, meaning her eventual old-age benefits will be smaller and she will likely take much longer to be fully vested in terms of qualifying quarters.

If a mother caring for her children could rely on children caring for their mother in her old age (as was once the norm), there might be some balance here. But neither socio-cultural expectations nor the job market for young people support that today.

If she eventually gets into the paid-job market, it is likely to be later and, because of her years outside it, likely result in relegation to lower...

By Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky.

Like an internecine tribal war, an emerging pastoral problem within the Latin Rite revolves around an alleged irreconcilability between the post-conciliar new Mass (Novus Ordo) and the pre-conciliar, so-called Tridentine Mass, also known as the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). The difficulties affect parish communities and even families. Some of the tension is historical and healthy. Other forms are unjust, uncharitable, and unnecessary.

Those of us who have lived through the post-Vatican II turmoil recall that the pre-Vatican II accusation was paralyzing. A pre-Vatican II person stood accused of legalism, triumphalism, and intolerance. Today, many proponents of the TLM accuse fellow Catholics who attend Novus Ordo Masses as post-Vatican II.

Pope Francis' restrictions on the TLM did not resolve tensions, as he said he intended, but fueled discontent. And recent revelations that most of the world's bishops did not view the older Mass as a problem have stoked fires once more.

The Fathers of Vatican II taught that new liturgical change "should in some way grow organically from forms already existing." (Sacrosanctum Concilium 23) They did not mandate the vernacular, but permitted it (and did not envision that the Roman Canon would depart from the Latin). Pope John Paul II's doctrinal chief, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, tirelessly argued that a "hermeneutic of continuity" in liturgy and doctrine would eventually heal the perceived Vatican II rupture.

Sober Churchmen could have suppressed irreverent innovations: "Hootenanny Masses," folk Masses, liturgical dance, narcissistic priests, and the many violations of liturgical guidelines. But ill-advised changes wounded liturgical practices. Most importantly, faith in the Real Presence suffered.

In the 1970s and 1980s, authorities often labeled an orthodox seminarian as archconservative, pre-Vatican II, and rigid. Although occasionally naïve and immature, he held fast to the doctrines of the Catholic faith, especially the teaching on contraception and abortion. He preferred traditional sacred hymnody and objected to the vapid Glory and Praise Jesuit hymnal. He was a liturgical lawman and hoped priests would faithfully read the words of the Mass, accompanied by the prescribed gestures.

He silently endured the seminary authorities who forced everyone to stand (rather than kneel) during the Canon of the Mass. He rejected the bizarre innovation of liturgical dance, the abomination of clown Masses (sic), and a whole array of liturgical nonsense that haunts elderly Catholics today with flashback memories. A "pre-Vatican II" seminarian read the documents of Vatican II with a critical and faithful mind.

The typical "archconservative pre-Vatican II rigid" seminarian did not oppose the Novus Ordo. He lamented liturgical abuse and bad liturgical translations. In the 1990s, over 2,000 English-speaking Novus Ordo priests raised alarms over the revised liturgical translation. The bureaucratic plan was to desacralize the vocabulary (eliminate words such as spirit, holy, and Only Begotten) and distort the translation towards a feminist ideology. The translation wars continued until proponents of an accurate translation of the Latin Roman Missal declared victory with the release of a good English translation in 2011.

The return to relative liturgical stability and reverence enabled the restoration of the TLM - beginning with the Ecclesia Dei initiative of Pope John Paul II and continuing with the policies of Pope Benedict. Many hoped the reintroduction of the TLM into Church practice would help the Novus Ordo mature with the help of its elder brother.

The widespread celebration of the TLM encourages priests to reinforce and incorporate many of the reverent gestures of the TLM into the Novus Ordo without violence. Among the compatibilities: The crisp and reverent orans posture, downcast eyes (which immunizes a priest from the virus of narcissism), traditional sacred hymnody, celebr...

By Dominic V. Cassella

In the Gospel of John, our Lord is recorded as saying "I AM," the Greek "ego eimi," over forty times. The phrase should call to mind for the reader the episode in Exodus 3:14, when Moses encounters God and the burning bush. Moses asks for the name of God and the voice returns: "I AM."

St. Hilary of Poitiers tells us in his treatise of the Trinity that when he was a pagan and came across these words from Exodus, he knew - because of his philosophical training - that the speaker of these words must be the one and only, true God.

However, not all of the "I AM" statements are without qualification. Among these forty or so "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John, seven are attached to a predicate: "I am the bread of life" (6, Verse 35), "I am the light of the world" (8, Verse 12), "I am the door" (10, Verse9), "I am the good shepherd" (10, Verse11), "I am the resurrection and the life" (11, Verse 25), "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (14, Verse 6), and "I am the true vine" (15, Verse 1).

The names as presented by John seem to demonstrate what is called a "chiastic" structure. The first and the last statement parallel and relate to each other, just as the second and the penultimate statements, as do the third and fifth - each pair mirroring the other until the pattern, like an archway, arrives at its summit and interpretive cornerstone.

Classic examples of chiastic structure exist in both Sacred Scripture and secular literature. The story of Noah, the Gospel of Mark, and many of the psalms, along with Dante's Divine Comedy and Homer's Odyssey, all exhibit this literary form - where ideas are arranged symmetrically to emphasize a central theme or turning point.

Notably, John's prologue uses the literary device to focus on John 1:12 - that believing in God is what makes us children of God. And likewise, it seems that the same literary tool is being used through the "I AM" statements to emphasize the fact that Jesus is the "Good Shepherd."

In fact, if you exclude John 21, that "Jesus is the Good Shepherd" is arguably the central thematic statement of the Gospel. And, when you factor back in John 21, what you have is an epilogue where Jesus now makes Peter his Vicar and Shepherd of His Church.

The Church Fathers frequently saw something important in Jesus' singling out of Peter in the last chapter of the Gospel of John. From John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Jerome to Theophylact of Bulgaria and Thomas Aquinas, those who comment on this Gospel see in Christ's command to Peter to "Feed my Sheep" and "Follow me" a reaffirmation (or even reinstitution) of primacy.

It seems that Peter had abandoned his role as "rock" when, in fear of being attacked by the Jews, he chose to deny Jesus Christ. Such a denial is both a great moral, but also theological failure on the part of Peter. In fact, if we think about where we get our word heresy, that is the Greek haireó, meaning "I choose," we might even call Peter's denial the ultimate heresy.

With the election of Leo XIV, we would do well to remind ourselves and consider deeply the foundations and implications of the Chair of St. Peter, that the pope is to be the Shepherd of Christ who feeds His sheep.

Indeed, in light of Diane Montagna's recent discovery of a CDF report that undermines the rationale of Pope Francis' Traditionis Custodes (which limited the use of the Traditional Latin Mass), allegedly because the bishops of the world were concerned about it (they weren't), understanding the papacy, synodality, and their limits is especially relevant today.

As one finds throughout history, knowing the full extent and limits of papal authority has resulted in a large range of opinions and fiery debate. Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith, a 500-page anthology edited by Peter Kwasniewski, gathers together 50 articles that shed light on this subject from authors such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Thomas Pink, Edward Feser, Bisho...

by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

In these days when everyone talks of rights and few of duties, it is important for us Americans to recall that the Declaration of Independence is also a Declaration of Dependence. The Declaration of Independence asserts a double dependence: dependence on God and dependence on law as derived from God.

Where do we get our right of free speech? Where do we get freedom of conscience? Whence is derived the right to own property? Do we get these rights and liberties from the State? If we did, the State could take them away. Do we get them from the federal government in Washington? If we did, the federal government could take them away.

Whence comes the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Read the Declaration of Independence and there find the answer: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Notice these words: The Creator has endowed men with rights and liberties; men got them from God! In other words, we are dependent on God, and that initial dependence is the foundation of our independence.

Suppose we interpret independence, as some liberal jurists do, as independence of God; then rights and liberties come either from the State, as Bolshevism contends, or from the dictators, as Nazism and Fascism believe. But if the State or the dictator is the creator of rights, then the State or the dictator can dispossess men of their rights.

That is why in those countries where God is most denied, man is most tyrannized, and where religion is most persecuted, man is most enslaved. It is only because we are dependent on God that we are independent as persons from the total will of any man on earth.

Let us not think that by denying God we will have purchased independence. The pendulum of the clock that wanted to be free from its point of suspension found that on becoming independent of its suspension, it was no longer free to swing. The Communists and the Nazis and the Fascists who denied God as the source of their freedom got in the end the inglorious freedom of State prisoners.

Democracy is based not on the divine right of kings but on the divine right of persons. Each person has a value because God made him, not because the State recognizes him. The day we adopt in our democracy the already widespread ideas of some American jurists that right and justice depend on convention and the spirit of the times, we shall write the death warrant of our independence. . . .

The Declaration of Independence, I repeat, is a Declaration of Dependence. We are independent of dictators because we are dependent on God. Because we are dependent on God, it follows that it is religion's first duty to preserve that relationship between man and his Creator.

Religion and democracy, therefore, are not the same. Some religious leaders never once in their discourses mention the name of God, but they actually define religion as democracy. Certain alarmists, when a personal representative of the president was sent to the Holy Father, shrieked against union of Church and State - but they do not protest against the identification of religion and democracy, which is an insult to both religion and democracy.

If religion is democracy, then let us drop religion and become State servants; if democracy is religion, then let us scrap democracy and enter a monastery. Religion is not democracy. The two are as different as soul and body.

Religion is primarily for the salvation of man's soul, and democracy is primarily for the prosperity and common good of the nation. God is not Caesar, and Caesar is not God. Have our so-called called religious leaders forgotten: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21)?

Once religion abdicates its soul-saving mission as its primary end, it becomes as ridiculous a...

By Michael Pakaluk.

God's plan for a person's support in old age can be stated in five words: children, and the extended family.

The Church teaches that this is affirmed by the Fourth Commandment. "Honor your father and your mother" means to obey them when under their care, and to love and honor them always, which includes providing them with the necessities of life when they are old and infirm. "Children must give their parents material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress." (CCC 2218)

It's just that children repay their parents, treating their parents as once their parents treated them. The incentives are sound also: parents have an incentive to have children, to raise them well, to act towards each other so that their children will continue to love them - and to care for themselves, ultimately, by caring for others.

In cases where the couple cannot have children, or where the children have perished by war or disease, then - by "subsidiarity" - the extended family first should step in to act in their stead, much the way Elizabeth's kinswoman, Mary, helped her.

One may consider which is the more serious obligation, to care for the children one has begotten, or to care, when necessary, for those who have begotten you? Certainly, the latter is a highly serious obligation. Christ himself inveighed against those Pharisees who nullified the Commandment, teaching that children could withhold such care on the grounds that the available resources had already been declared "Corban," that is, dedicated to God. (Mark 7:11)

Arguably, our own Corban today is so-called Social Security "insurance." Suppose an elderly couple worked hard to raise, say, four wage-earning children and in justice wished later to claim from them needed support. The children certainly could each give 12.4 percent out of their incomes - a tidy sum - since they are already paying that to the government. And yet those funds cannot be touched, as they are " Corban" - dedicated already to paying for the retirements of strangers who did nothing to raise them.

"You nullify God's commandment by the traditions of men." Up against the claim upon their children in natural law, which parents have, is a tradition of men (i.e., SS) that is very weak indeed. As several SCOTUS opinions have clarified, "Social Security beneficiaries" have no property rights in what they paid into the system, and neither do they have a contractual claim. Congress could decide tomorrow to abolish the whole Social Security system on the grounds, say, that it is no longer wise to borrow from foreign governments (as we must do) to pay the benefits.

It's not that the government needs to step in here to do something lower-level entities cannot do. If a man today at age 25 starts work in a $50,000/year job and, in a compulsory system, puts as much income into an index fund as he's paying for Social Security "insurance" premiums (and suppose he never increases his contributions even if his salary grows), he will nevertheless have $8 million in his investment account when he retires at age 75 - enough so that he can live in luxury with his wife, cover their medical expenses, and have lots besides to bequeath to their children. That's how wealthy we are. I am not imagining an extraordinary case but assigning conservative figures to the most common, widely attainable case.

One arrives at similar grand retirement fund if one imagines that the father doesn't pay in anything himself. Instead, his children, in a compulsory system, as soon as they start work, contribute 12.4 percent of their earnings, until the time of their parents' deaths. The scheme is doable, we know, because we do it already, for strangers, through the government.

Social Security and government schools are of a piece. Parents are the primary educators of their children: they should have the first claim on a family's resources for educating their children. Yet their claim comes second, if there's an...

By Francis X. Maier .

Jacques Ellul, the French Protestant philosopher, sociologist, and theologian, famously argued that technology evolves autonomously. In effect, technology shapes society more than society shapes technology. He warned that humans become servants to efficiency and technical progress. Ellul also worried that technology undermines human freedom by promoting uniformity and reducing moral choices. Ultimately, he was concerned that technology becomes an end in itself, overshadowing human values.

In his book English Speaking Justice, the Canadian political philosopher George Parkin Grant critiqued modern liberalism and technological society along similar lines. He argued that even by its own standards, liberal society is unjust. He focused on how technology and liberal values shape our concepts of justice, and he examined how those values often undermine community and ethical life. In essence, he suggested that the pursuit of individual rights and technological progress often leads to a loss of deeper moral values.

Grant is the man I want to talk about this week. But here's a confession: With a few minor tweaks from me, AI wrote both of the previous two paragraphs. And it got the factual content therein more or less right, without the burden of my having to think about any of it. The program I used is Perplexity. I had a very pleasant editorial meeting with its algorithms, and Perplexity itself generously suggested that Ellul and Grant "might have mixed feelings" about my using it as a shortcut for avoiding any actual work. Which implies that machines, too, can be ironic. More on that in a moment.

Meanwhile, back to Grant. Summer is typically a time for rest and light reading. Yet for anyone more inclined to a challenge - for anyone seriously interested in understanding how our civilization got where it is - the work of George Parkin Grant (1918-1988) is an invaluable resource. He was a keen historian, an engaging writer, and a compelling cultural analyst.

Grant was that peculiarly Canadian creature (now extinct) known as a Red Tory. A committed Christian, he was morally and culturally "conservative." In other words, he actually believed what he claimed to believe, and allowed a Biblically-rooted faith to inform his public life. He opposed both euthanasia and abortion, and was a strong defender of Canadian national identity and its distinct history and culture in the face of American continental dominance. He was also a fierce critic of both the Vietnam War and the damage inflicted on the human spirit by an overconfident and idolatrous cult of technological progress.

In his lecture "Temporality and Technological Man" (collected here), Grant noted: "When Marx wrote of changing the world, he still believed that changing was not an end in itself, but the means to a future society conducive to the good life for all. . . .For all his denial of past [including Biblical] thought, he retained from that past the central truth about human beings - namely that there is, in man, a given humanness that it is our purpose to fulfill."

In contrast, Grant argued, today's secularized, technology-centric culture treats the human will as the only real source of meaning, and change itself as the ongoing proof of that meaning. It implicitly denies any end state, higher purpose, or inherent nature to our species. And this, in turn, destroys human dignity in the name of exalting it, by providing material benefits that only serve as temporary anesthetics for a deeper emptiness.

In his essay "Religion and the State" (collected here), Grant asked

Has the secular state, and the religion of progress that dominates its education, led to widespread happiness in North America in the last forty years? How can we escape the fact that the necessary end product of the religion of progress is not hope, but a society of existentialists who know themselves in their own self-consciousness, but know the world entirely as despair? In other words, whe...