Late evening, July 6. My session finally took place today at about 4:15 pm. Cardinal Martino presented the Compendium of the Social Doctrine. He pointed out that the family was given pride of place in the document, listed before the economy or government or international relations or the environment. Most memorable statement: “The family is not a function of society or the state. State and society are functions of the family.” Madame Boutin made her presentation. She is an plished...

I’m leaving tomorrow to attend the Advanced Studies in Freedom seminar sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies and hosted at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. The conference runs from July 8-14, and will “take a deeper look at topics such as spontaneous order, social development, and public choice, considering them in both a historical context and in light of issues today.” Seminar faculty include Randy Barnett of Boston University (Law), Stephen Davies of Manchester Metropolitan University (History), Sandy Ikeda...

Earlier this week at the World Meeting of Families: On July 4, the opening day,the program began at 4 PM and was scheduled to go until 8:00. But the opening day had a cloud hanging over it. A subway accident in Valencia claimed the lives of 41 people and injured many others. The conference was originally scheduled to have ing speeches by the major of Valencia, Mrs. Rita Barbera, and the Archbishop of Valencia, the Most Rev. Agustin Garcia-Gascon Vicente....

Today, my Phillipina demographer friend and I went to the center city of Valencia. We have tickets to go to the Encounter with the Holy Father tonight, and we thought we’d do some sight-seeing during the day. Well, we couldn’t get near the Cathedral, where a cup reported to be the Holy Grail is kept. The streets were already filling with pilgrims waiting for the Pope’s arrival. The streets along the official parade were lined with police barriers, but no...

There was an impressive Australian contingent at the World Meeting of Families. I saw one group of at least 50, and there may have been others. They were all decked out in yellow and green soccer shirts that said "Australia" on the back, wore Outback hats and carried a large Australian flag. That was just at the conference. (Cardinal Pell was terrific on the panel, as expected.) At the Parade this morning, I saw the same green and yellow jerseys....

BRYN MAWR, July 9, 2006 – I arrived safely at Bryn Mawr College yesterday for the beginning of the Institute for Humane Studies Advanced Studies in Freedom Conference. Someone will have to explain to me the economic efficiency of flying from Detroit to Philadelphia by way of Atlanta. The odations are excellent, and the campus is quite beautiful. The program began last night, and continued today with two morning lectures. The schedule is well suited to a good amount of...

In Part 2, we saw that modern Protestant skepticism toward reason is one of the most significant factors in the rejection of natural law. mand ethics, particularly of the variety espoused by Karl Barth, quickly came to dominate the field of Protestant theological ethics in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Karl Barth rejected every form of natural theology and, simultaneously, pulled the rug out from under natural law. But among neoorthodox theologians of the 1930s, only Barth and...

BRYN MAWR, July 10, 2006 – Things are progressing smoothly for me here at the Advanced Studies in Freedom seminar. Our daily schedule includes four major lectures from seminar faculty, each with built in small group discussion time as well as Q&As with the presenting faculty. One of our first activities was to try and self-identify in terms of our view of the role of government (if any). I identified with the endorsement of a limited government, whose main role...

BRYN MAWR, July 11, 2006 – One school of libertarian political thought is that of the so-called anarcho-capitalists. Here’s a good summary: “Anarcho-capitalists reject the state as an unjustified monopolist and systematic aggressor against sovereign individuals, and would replace it with cooperatives, neighborhood associations, private businesses and similar non-monopolistic organizations.” I think this view is patible with biblical Christianity. Perhaps you think that this conclusion is rather uncontroversial and obvious. Even so, Christians who are broadly in favor of limited...

It is one thing to create wealth by using our gifts. This is a matter of knowledge. It is quite a different thing to know what to do with the wealth that has been created. That is where es into the picture. Rev. Zandstra, a Senior Fellow with the Acton Institute, examines Warren Buffett’s recent gift of $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and offers words of hope that the Gates Foundation can use this wealth with...

Philanthropy, for all its good intentions, does not necessarily imply a personal connection with the needy person. It can and often does, but it doesn’t have to. Philanthropy is the more institutional, “big-picture” cousin of charity, which is the personal and direct connection to those in need. Andrew Carnegie building hundreds of libraries with the wealth he made in the steel industry, and being celebrated for it to this day, is philanthropy. Your Aunt Evelyn volunteering at the local church-operated...

BRYN MAWR, July 12, 2006 – Yesterday I outlined in brief a biblical case for the legitimate and even divine institution of civil government. Having established that the State is a valid social institution, the next step in what is broadly called social ethics is to outline the scope of the State’s authority and its relations to other social institutions. A valuable place to start might be in defining what the role of the State ought to be, rather than...