Two years ago I wrote a piece about St. Thomas entitled In Defense of Doubt. In it, I praised St. Thomas for facing his doubts and said that honest doubt can be a good thing. In light of current proposals to change the wording of the last clause of the “Our Father,” I should like … Read more
It’s been said that advertising is the world’s oldest profession, with the devil needing only a clever marketing campaign to get Adam and Eve to eat the apple. Whether or not that is true, it certainly is true that we can be swayed by slogans and jingles into doing the silliest things. “You deserve a … Read more
Hubris is a theme that preoccupied the minds of the ancient Greeks. Man’s fate was unpredictable in a world governed by capricious deities, therefore one ought to temper one’s aspirations and avoid displeasing them in any way. Calamities could befall whole cities because of hubris in one man, as Sophocles dramatized in Oedipus Rex. In … Read more