There are so many things I took much longer to learn than I should have.  Here is an incomplete list.

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There is nothing wrong with old ideas, so long as they are true.  And there is nothing admirable about new ones, if they aren’t. 

There are some truths which do not have to be proven, but are needed for working out all the other truths.

Query:

In considering the relative gravity of sins, Aquinas considers pride in itself as graver than murder, since pride, in its proper meaning, is by its very nature a turning away from God.  Murder in its nature constitutes an unjust taking of life, and turning away from God is its consequence, not its essence.

Query:

Are Christians idealists, in the sense in which a Marxist would use the term?  You know I am at university in a Marxist country.

Reply:

I think you may be asking any of four different things.

Rather than an extended reflection on a single theme, this is a series of short thoughts that have been knocking around in my mind.

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Query:

Is Christian charity compatible with competition, so that someone could say “I want to love God for His own sake more than anyone else”?

Here are the title and opening paragraphs of my new Op-Ed at The Wall Street Journal.  I'm not allowed to give you the whole thing, of course, because of the paywall.

Query:

Is God an abstract and meaningless idea?

Every schoolchild used to know that the four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude.  These aren’t the only virtues, or even the only important ones, but rather those on which all the ordinary human virtues depend, for each of them can be viewed as one of the “parts” or aspects of one of the Four Big Ones.