CADRE Comments

On July 9, 2019, Public Discourse published an insightful article (which was apparently either earlier or later delivered as a speech) by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput entitled, “ Building A Culture of Religious Freedom .” Early in the article, Archbishop Chaput made three points that deserve to be repeated, and so I will spend a little time in the next three blogposts reviewing and expanding upon what he wrote. His first point begins with an undeniable fact of human existence: We’re mortal, we’re going to die. However, for those with faith in God (and here, Archbishop Chaput means the God of the Bible), this simple truth can compel Christians to live lives in a way that those who lack faith cannot comprehend. When the non-religious world looks at death, it is rarely to consider the consequences of one’s actions in life. After all, from the worldly viewpoint there is no afterlife. As a result, as explained so elegantly in the first few chapters of Ecclesiastes, in the ...

I am presently reading a book by Professor Alan Dershowitz entitled Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, Remarkable Discovery, And The First Amendment In An Age Of Terrorism . In the book, Prof. Dershowitz details how he located a previously unknown letter written by the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, in a specialty bookstore in New York, and how that letter gives insight about Pres. Jefferson's view on the reach of the First Amendment. Personally, I don’t recommend reading the book because too much of the book is either fluff (Chapter one is all about Prof. Dershowitz’s hobby as a collector) or Prof. Dershowitz’s effort to have a one-sided argument with a man who can’t respond (the final chapters are his “letter” back to Pres. Jefferson giving reasons for disagreeing with his views). Also, Prof. Dershowitz is, of course, somewhat of a typical New York liberal in his views, and consequently he takes a fairly heavy-handed, dismissive view of thinkers who believe that Am...