Rev. Robert Sirico joined Laura Ingraham’s radio show last week to talk about The Da Vinci Code. With the approach of the movie’s May 19 release, there’s quite a stir in munities. Many believers are trying to raise awareness that Dan Brown’s book and now the movie is a historical fiction -– not 100 percent factual history and definitely not theology. A few munities are calling for a boycott of the movie, and others are engaging in Da Vinci Code...

As a brief follow-up to my post last week about the state of scholarly publishing, I want to highlight this recent article in The New York Times, “Scan This Book!” by Kevin Kelly, who is on the staff at Wired magazine. He conjures up the same image as Janet H. Murray, of “the great library at Alexandria,” and laments that “for 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has...

Yesterday afternoon, Andrew Yuengert joined host Al Kresta on Kresta in the Afternoon on the Ave Maria Radio Network to discuss immigration reform and President Bush’s most recent proposal to secure the USA’s southern border. Yuengert is an Associate Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and the author of Inhabiting the Land, an economic analysis of migration and part of Acton’s Christian Social Thought Series of monographs. To listen to the interview, click here (6.5 mb mp3 file). Inhabiting the...

In his fragmentary and plete Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer examines the reality of the will of God, which he e to us from Scripture in the form of four mandates: work, marriage, government, and church. Here’s a great summary of Bonhoeffer’s view of the mandate of the government or state, from his essay, “Christ, Reality, and Good,” pages 72-73: The divine mandate of government already presupposes the mandates of work and marriage. In the world that it rules, government finds already...

For some reason, I get the impression that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the editorial board of the NYT need a lesson in the birds and the bees. The NYT criticizes Putin’s plan to address falling population levels in Russia “with a wide range of subsidies and financial incentives, along with improved health care, a crackdown on illicit alcohol, improved road safety and the like.” Thankfully for the future of humanity, the NYT has a different suggestion: “Perhaps another...

Over at the Alabama Policy Institute, Gary Palmer takes on University of Alabama law professor Susan Pace Hamill and her assertion that Christians have an obligation to pay higher taxes. In “No Biblical Mandate for Higher Taxes,” Palmer examines her “theocratic tax inquisition.” In one article directed at Christians in Alabama, Professor Hamill contends that to be truly pro-life you must also support paying higher taxes to give the government more money to provide more government programs for the poor....

John Stossel has made an excellent and noteworthy journalistic career by going where the evidence takes him. He possesses an intellectual honesty and curiosity that is refreshing, especially pared to the banal talking head syndrome which dominates most main stream media. As co-anchor of ABC’s 20/20, Stossel has negotiated a deal which allows him to do special reports on whatever interesting and controversial topics he chooses. His latest was a special aimed at debunking popularly accepted myths, tied to the...

The May 16 Independent is guest-edited by the ubiquitous Bono and sports the RED brand–another Bono project where a share of the profits from the mag will be donated to fighting AIDS and poverty in Africa. panies with RED brands include Converse, American Express, Armani, and GAP.) See the issue for yourself (where you will find a critique of subsidies, as well as Nelson Mandela giving props to RED as well as an interview edian Eddie Izzard–two men who much...

Jaroslav Pelikan, the great historian of the Christian Tradition, died May 13 at his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 82 years old and had been battling lung cancer. Pelikan wrote more than 30 books and over a dozen reference works covering the entire history of Christianity. Perhaps his best known work is the five-volume “The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.” In 2003, he published “Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith...

In the in-box, this interesting survey from Nate at Field & Stream: A new survey conducted by the National Wildlife Federation (the results of which are being hosted exclusively on ) shows that: 76 percent of sportsmen believe global warming is occurring71 percent believe it’s a serious threat to fish and wildlife78 percent believe the U.S. should reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 even though: 73 percent consider themselves conservative to moderate on political issues50 percent consider themselves...