As we close out the year, we want to thank our PowerBlog readers for reading and contributing to our blog. If you’re a new reader we encourage you to catch up by checking out our top 10 most popular posts for 2012:

1. What’s Next in the Fight Against the HHS Mandate

Elise Hilton

Kyle Duncan, general counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, gives us a glimpse of what is ahead in the fight for religious liberty regarding the Obama Administration’s HHS Mandate, given the e of Tuesday’s election.

2. Is The Post Office Trying to Send Us a Message About Freedom?

Joe Carter

“Forever stamps” are a form of non-denominated postage first introduced in 2006. The U.S. Postal Service recently issued a “Four Flags” version which “continues [the U.S. Postal Service’s] tradition of honoring the Stars and Stripes.” But there seems something peculiar—even a bit ominous—about the new stamps.

3. Popes Say No to Socialism

Michael Severance

Popes in Rome have attempted to steer the Catholic flock away from the “seductive” forces of socialist ideologies threatening human liberty, which since the late 1800s have relentlessly plucked away at ”the delicate fruit of mature civilizations” as Lord Acton once said.

4. How God Makes a Pencil

Joe Carter

In 1958, Leonard Read published his brilliant essay, “I, Pencil.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently released a wonderful video that illustrates Read’s point that the creation of a pencil requires an unfathomable level plexity and undirected cooperation.

5. Cristiada: A Story of Heroic Martyrdom

Michael Severance

Truth be told, many of us had not heard much about the Cristeros War, the civil rebellion led by priests and laity to resist the total elimination of religious liberty in Mexico in the 1920s under marxist President Plutarco Calles.

6. Hobby Lobby’s Billionaire CEO Says ‘God Owns It’

Joseph Sunde

Forbes recently ran a profile of Christian billionaire and Hobby Lobby CEO David Green. According to Forbes, Green is “the largest evangelical benefactor in the world,” giving “at upwards of $500 million” over the course of his life, primarily to Christian ministries.

7. The FRC Shooting and the Vocation of a Hero

Joe Carter

As C.S. Lewis once said, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.” Today, at the point of highest reality, when a dull desk job called for the vocation of a hero, Leo showed he had the form of every virtue. He was willing to lay down his life to protect those he served.

8. Daniel Hannan’s Caveat to America

Michael Severance

Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament, issued a strong warning to conservative Americans worried about their country’s future in a speech he delivered at the CPAC rally last week in Washington.

9. Reply to America Magazine

Rev. Robert Sirico

Anytime I can get a progressive/dissenting Catholic magazine/blog like the Jesuit-run America simultaneously to quote papal documents, defend the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, embrace the Natural Law and even yearn for a theological investigation “by those charged with oversight for the Church’s doctrine” of a writer suspected of heresy, I consider that I have had a good day.

10. If Christ is Lord, Everything Matters

Mindy Hirst / Jake Belder

What then does it mean to live in the light of eternity? It begins with recognising that the “all” in the statement above refers to the whole of created reality. This is where the root of the problem often lies, for many Christians have a narrow view of creation that does not go beyond the physical stuff that we can see and touch.