Mondays are for answering letters. This isn’t exactly a letter, but I think it's close enough; it’s a question I have been asked frequently, most recently when I was speaking about natural law at Acton Institute’s annual conference on the foundations of a free and virtuous society.
Everyone admits that pain is educational: Since I feel agony when I put my hand into the fire, I don’t do it again. Curiously, we are much more reluctant to admit that there is such a thing as natural disgust, and disgust is educational too. St. John Chrysostom makes this point exactly in his Homily on First Timothy:
Mondays are always for replying to letters from readers. I’ve paraphrased this letter for brevity.
One sometimes hears otherwise faithful persons say that although they never speak to their friends about their faith, they try to live in such a way that their lives will be a witness to the Gospel.
A bogus quote from St. Francis of Assissi is often used in support of this idea. No, he did not say “Always preach the Gospel, and when necessary, use words.”
Solely authored brief submitted in cooperation with The Justice Foundation (2005)
Under duress, the Secretary of State has finally turned over her private email server to the FBI. Her apparent serious violation of national security laws should certainly be investigated – but in an executive branch in which the administration of justice is so regularly harnessed to political ends, why does the FBI bother?
