Sublime

Any concept of justice that hopes to win broad support in the real world has to be political in these three ways: to be narrow in scope; to be free-standing of any comprehensive moral doctrine; and to be grounded in widely shared ideas drawn from the public political culture. The original position ensures that Rawls’s principles possess these featu

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I believe that Christianity as a religion has profound gifts to offer the world, but that can only happen when Christians are willing to be in a humble and open-hearted dialogue with everyone else. I am less interested in defending the Christian religion or some notion of Christendom than I am in allowing the truth of Christ’s message to penetrate ... See more

The Church’s “preferential option for the poor” (the great phrase from the 1968 Medellin Conference) may be a proper imperative, but not on the basis of intrinsically different worth among classes. What counts is to offer the depth of God’s love to those with whom one lives. The poor are preferred only because they are “there”—or “here”—but are ign... See more

to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of wh

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