By a prodding of Providence, I walked into an old religious house some days ago in the French village where I live, where, as in the massive, once flourishing house of sisters across the road, the remnants of a formerly vibrant missionary order spend their waning years in retirement. The same saintly founder bequeathed both…
I recently got to tour the papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo, and it was a remarkable experience. They were too lovely for my poor powers of description. Everything we passed was papal property. Papal olive groves, papal greenhouses, papal cypresses; the ancient remains of the imperial summer palace; and, yes, papal chickens and cows! There…
I’ve been trying for a long time to fathom what makes me uneasy about the concept and rhetoric of “social justice.” Michael Novak pointed out recently that part of the problem is taking social “justice” not, as the use of traditional vocabulary would suggest, as a true virtue present in individuals, but rather as a…
