In the eleven weeks since he became president, Barack Obama has opened up every avenue to abortion presented to him.
Presidents are, inevitably, something like Christ figures. They all suffer and, eventually, fall.
President Barack Obama's inaugural address sounded more conservative than one might have expected.
Michael Novak of AEI delivered the fourth of the 2008-2009 Bradley Lectures on December 8.
A recounting of two pivotal battles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that repelled Islamist invaders of Europe illuminates today's cultural and religious confrontations.
What does the election of Senator Barack Obama as the new president of the United States mean?
America was founded as a commercial republic, a type most thought to promote the civic spirit that would ensure its democratic vitality. But there are "cultural contradictions" in commerce.
Today, pluralism needs a new set of protections.
The young kids on the new Notre Dame football team really want to win and the veterans maybe more so.
Democrats have ceded the anti-abortion position to Republicans.
The atheist view of the world israther bleaker than that of Jews and Christians: suffering under the weight of evil is meaningless, and so is any struggle against evil.
How could a good God let unthinkable suffering torment our world?
Is the U.S. economy as horrible as everyone is saying it is?
Newt Gingrich's Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8 and William S. Cohen's Dragon Fire are good summer reads.
No One Sees God, which hits bookstores in August, covers God, atheism, and faith.
Personal medical funds and personally owed retirement accounts are successful in many other nations and should be tried in the United States.
If we take Barack Obama at his word, his presidency will be in thrall to the American far Left.
The lack of realism in the cultural revolution of the 1960s led to the birth of "the center Right."
Trying to be exquisitely "fair" and managerial, the Democrats forgot one thing: the point of a nomination process is to come out with a clear winner.
Pope Benedict XVI needs to helpthe American Church, but there may be other reasons for his trip toWashington,D.C.
Beauty, history, and a shelf of murder mysteries.
Most atheists unconsciously acknowledge Judeo-Christian ethics in the way they live.
Questions may be raised in good faith about a presidential candidate's religion in respect to doctrines that bear upon social and political matters and public law.
Newsweek's Jon Meacham makes two mistakes in his assessment of Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech.
Throughout the news there are stories of victory and defeat from democracy in Venezuela to Notre Dame's football record.
Despite much speculation, it is not clear whythe dean of Ave Maria School of Law turned down two tenure petitions and dismissed a tenured professor.
The suffering of Mother Teresa.
A happyweekend in Happy Valley.
Tennessee's textbook at issue in the Scopes Monkey Trial promotes Darwinian biology--and racial eugenics.
How the president can fight back on the home front.
Economic reds like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards forestall economic progress in the United States by expanding thestate machineandhiking tax rates.
Michael Novak reviews Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
Both the late Jerry Falwell and his Baptist forebears reminded America of its spiritual and philosophical diversity.
What is religious freedom, and how does Islam deal with it?
What can the faculty of St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania--a Benedictine institution--expect from George W. Bush's commencement lecture there later this month?
Atheists who think that believers are simple have a simplistic understanding of belief.
Do true good and true evil exist?
Is George W. Bush a disastrous portrayal of conservatism?
The Democrats are taking us down the wrong road.
George Washington more than anyone else established our nation's traditions for speaking about God.
A response to criticism of President Bush's tenure.
This year's State of the Union speech may have been the most clearly argued tour de force of the president's two terms thus far.
President Ford paved the way for much that came after him. And, after his presidency, he could not have been more supportive of his successors, even when he disagreed with them.
Michael Novak contributes to a NRO symposium on the execution of Saddam Hussein.
2006, 1863: we've been here before.
Michael Novak enlightens Italians on the midterm elections,progress inthe Iraq war, and the future of Europe.
Increasing the minimum wage is not the best way to helpstruggling single mothers, minorities, and the poor.
Friends, colleagues, and admirerspay tribute toJeane Kirkpatrick.
Jeane Kirkpatrick was an enormous force for honesty, liberty, candor, straightforwardness, and sheer moral bravery.
For a purely secular morality, weak before the ravages of relativism, moral decadence is an almost irresistible downward drive.
Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological, not physical.
The understated significance of Saddam’s death sentence is its real establishment of the rule of law under Democratic governance in the Middle East.
It is not only “conservative values” that can be reached through the use of reason alone, but also knowledge about God.
Can Republicans hope for a "November Surprise"?
The most astonishing thing to say about the religion of the Founders is how little it has been studied during the past hundred years.
SinceDemocrats today are living in a world of illusions about public policy, the only way they can win elections is by deception and dirty tricks.
The two greatest naval forces ever assembled--280 ships in the Turkish Armada, some 212 on the Christian side--came into each other's sight on a brilliant morning on October 7.
Having a religiousview in politics should not automatically associate someone with a Religious Right.
The spirit of the Old West--explorers, adventurers, cowboys, pioneers--is not dead.
There seems to be a real panic out there in Secular Land. Some endow the "Christian Right" with dreadful mythical intent to destroy the Bill of Rights.
Notre Dame's Fighting Irishbattled through a difficult deficit to win one of the most exciting college football games this season.
The enemies of the United States always underestimate the courage and determination of the people of the United States. Too bad. They pay a big price for that.
But I do like it better when Notre Dame is not so highly ranked, and fights its way upwards. Starting near the top always makes me nervous. It is an immigrant thing.
I hope that the dreams, concerns and worries of all the faculty at theAve MariaLaw School are carefully heard, and that the best decision for the common good of all is reached.
Christianity is growing because it has been better able to adapt to modernity, than modernity to it.
This difference in radical choices--the choices ofatheism and belief--isthe epicenter of human dignity. Each person is created free.
Believers and unbelievers live in a darkness that is remarkably the same.
Granted that we all live in darkness, even the atheist must decide how he should live.
A commemorative retrospective of one of Washington's most celebrated publishers, Philip Merrill.
If it is comfort that you seek, do not go to belief.
The Da Vinci Code, book and movie, gloats about bringing down the Christian Church. But what does the author, Dan Brown, dream of to fill its place?
I am often asked, "What do Catholics mean when they say 'the Trinity'?"
The Left has not yet learned the lessons of 1989.
Polls may be fickle. Notable accomplishments endure, as rock-solid facts. The full record of this president may yet turn out to be as highly ranked as his bravery is bound to be.
Is themovie version of The Da Vinci Code bound to offend Catholics?
There's a reason why Michael Novak and his daughter Jana (co-author of Washington's God) didn't mind a negative review of their book: it was plainly a review of someone else's book.
It looks as though Europe is set to repeat in the 21st century the disasters of the 20th, but we very much need Europe to be successful--and soon.
A review of Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason.
Watching a once-great political party decay is painful. What happened to the Democrats?
Would America today please Tocqueville? Would it surprise him? Or would he be worried? The answer is, a little of all three.
National Review Online
September 14, 2005
My first recoverable memory is of sitting on the back porch under candlelight in the spring of 1936, the evening after the flood of that year, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The poor may suffer worst of all, but they are not the only ones to taste bitter ashes in times of calamity, and to find their souls tested.
First Things
August 20, 2005
In my view the Catholic faith provides the fullest theory of political and personal liberty that I have ever encountered.
National Review Online
April 27, 2005
The phrase "unquestioned obedience" is a residue of unexamined anti-Catholic bigotry.It is an insult. Its aim can only be to make the new pope look stupidly dogmatic.
Pope John Paul II pointed the way to a new civilization of love--real, serious, self-sacrificing, other-centered, unselfish love.
New York Times
April 20, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI islikely to take culture as the central issue of the new millennium: What is the culture necessary to preserve free societies from their own internal dangers?
The culture of relativism invites its own destruction, both by its own internal incoherence and by its defenselessness against cultures of faith.
When Catholics speak of the "Holy Spirit" playing a role in the conclave, don't try to imagine a puppeteer pulling strings.
Weber grasped something crucially important about the spiritual wellsprings of capitalism.
National Review Online
April 12, 2005
I am glad I was able to bePope John Paul II's funeraland, when no one was looking, to blow him a final kiss as he disappeared into St. Peter's, out of sight.
The American Spectator
April 1, 2005
From our slumbers, he awakened us. He sailed against every prevailing wind--against communism andsources of division, trivial pursuit, and meaningless distraction.
Until those on the cultural Left accept the fact that religious principles have nurtured and maintained our constitutional democracy, they will remain on the fringes of our national politics.
National Review Online
March 1, 2005
President Bush's second inaugural has given the American proposition planetary scope.
National Review Online
January 26, 2005
Election day in Iraq may surprise the press.
National Review Online
January 21, 2005
President Bush calls forth a “new birth of freedom" for the whole world as an alternative to tyranny, and in America’s internal lifeas an end to a culture of dependency upon the state.
National Review Online
January 20, 2005
Democracy is the new name for personal dignity and for peace.
Elections in Iraq will be a plebiscite, too,on which version of Islam should prevail.
What are we to say about a human condition in which a 30-foot wall of water takes away the lives of going past 150,000 human beings?
Those of us who are Christians ought to launch a reciprocal campaign of "Christians in Gratitude to Atheists," to honor the contributions of nonbelievers to our free institutions.
National Review
November 29, 2004
The Democratic Left knows littleabout Christians and Christian faith, and they give in tothe ugly stereotypes that govern their descriptions of Christians.
The election victory of George W. Bushis beginning to affect very distant places and great spiritual changes are beginning to display their first sprouts.
The American conservative movement is optimistic and energetic.
First Things
August 1, 2004
Review of In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati.
How will Democrats hatePresident George W.Bush when they lose to him on November 2 by3 or4 percentage points?
National Review Online
July 23, 2004
Reaganomics transformed for the better the economic life of the poor in America and of American blacks in particular.
National Review Online
June 14, 2004
Last week was a celebration of the life and work of Ronald Reagan from the people of this country who loved him so much.
National Review Online
June 7, 2004
Ronald Reagan defeated Communism, led a new American Revolution, and awoke the better angels of our nature.
Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy
June 1, 2004
The Public Interest
June 1, 2004
We need to promote human rights, human dignity, and economicopportunity for the poor in the Muslim world.
The Weekly Standard
May 24, 2004
Review of Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriverby Scott Stossel.
On matters regarding "the culture of life," the pope and President George W. Bush will sense in one another quite remarkable allies in another of the most bitter battles of our time.
National Review Online
March 10, 2004
The Australian
February 25, 2004
Mel Gibson's The Passionis an overpowering religious experience.
National Review Online
February 4, 2004
National Review Online
February 2, 2004
A lot of light was shed by the performances of five Democratic candidates after the Iowa results came in.
Mont Pelerin Society
January 11, 2004
Washington Times
December 31, 2003
God bless the ACLU for cleansing the public life of the United States, at last, of discriminatory religious speech.
National Review Online
December 30, 2003
National Review Online
December 23, 2003
National Review Online
December 17, 2003
National Review Online
December 9, 2003
National Review Online
December 2, 2003
National Review Online
October 20, 2003
National Review Online
September 30, 2003
National Review Online
August 28, 2003
The big picture on American deaths in Iraq.
The Weekly Standard
August 25, 2003
The Passionis the most powerful movie I have ever seen.
National Review Online
August 14, 2003
It seems that Democrats in the U.S. Senate are officially in favor of judicial candidates of Catholic background who have only "shallow" feelings about their faith.
National Review Online
June 30, 2003
Hayek Foundation, Bratislava
June 23, 2003
It is to speak of a centuries-long argument about the deepest meaning of such terms as God, truth, freedom, justice, and community.
The National Interest
June 1, 2003
Review of Charles E. Lindblom's The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, What To Make Of It and Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy.
National Review Online
May 20, 2003
Commencement Address at Ave Maria College, MI
May 3, 2003
National Review Online
April 30, 2003
National Review Online
April 28, 2003
National Review Online
April 9, 2003
National Review Online
April 8, 2003
National Review Online
April 7, 2003
National Review Online
April 2, 2003
First Things
April 1, 2003
George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, and Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance owe their derivation to a Jewish and Christian worldview.
National Review Online
March 28, 2003
National Review Online
March 28, 2003
National Review
March 10, 2003
Blue Environmentalism stands for the spreading of those institutions of empowerment that promote private property and creativity.
The National Interest
March 1, 2003
Neither democracy nor capitalism provides much in the way of pure, idealized outcomes, romance, poetry, or myth.
National Review Online
February 18, 2003
Wall Street Journal
February 18, 2003
For decades, progressive economists have tried to make what one called "the uneasy case for the progressive income tax"--without success.
The Times
February 12, 2003
Catholic theologian Michael Novak explains why he believes his Holiness is wrong.
Speaker and Specialist Program, Rome, Italy
February 8, 2003
The author discusses the impending war with Iraq.
Washington Post
February 6, 2003
First Things
February 1, 2003
In the very first year of his papacy, Pope John Paul II planted a time bomb in the Church that is not likely to go off until about twenty years from now.
Wall Street Journal
January 17, 2003
National Review Online
January 10, 2003
Academic Questions
January 1, 2003
National Review Online
December 16, 2002
Wall Street Journal
December 13, 2002
Washington Times
December 13, 2002
America's Founders had no trouble with the God now deemed out of bounds.
First Things
November 1, 2002
Beginning in the thirteenth century, the three monotheistic religions parted ways, with the Jewish and Christian world going in one direction and the Islamic world going in another.
Jerusalem Post
September 5, 2002
On that quiet, halcyon September morning of 2001, something metaphysical in the structure of our world, not just psychological, snapped and came alive.
National Review Online
August 5, 2002
National Post
July 26, 2002
The "progressives" will not forgive John Paul II because what they call sexual liberation the Pope regards as the tyranny of the libido, a form of slavery.
National Review Online
May 13, 2002
Conference sponsored by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
March 20, 2002
In this generation, vast changes are likely to sweep through the Muslim world, as the peoples of Muslim nations demand liberty and prosperity, and seek to regain their place as leaders among the nations of the civilized world.
Wall Street Journal
February 7, 2002
After he lit the inflammatory phrase “the axis of evil”, President Bush has been receiving remarkably little criticism for the “evil” bit, and barely more than that for the “axis” part.
National Review
December 31, 2001
If terrorists are going to kill us just because we are Americans, we might as well be Americans, and inquire more deeply into what being American means.
Washington Times
October 20, 2001
Don't call us secular, bin Laden, don't call us unbelievers, and don’t call us infidels.
National Review Online
October 15, 2001
Satirical take on globalization protests in France.
National Review Online
October 11, 2001
The present war is not a war between a secular nation and a Muslim nation; ours is not a secular nation.
National Review
September 3, 2001
With stem cell speech, Bush tried to maintain a position of principle, but what he ended up doing was giving away the principle.
National Review Online
August 10, 2001
With stem-cell speech, Bushtried to maintain a position of principle, but he gave away the principle and tried to limit its application to the smallest universe he could.
National Review Online
July 16, 2001
Despite convictions about the potential person in embryos, the Times urges the destruction of embryos in order to gain medical knowledge.
The Weekly Standard
July 16, 2001
Bureaucratic protocol makes it impossible to address the emptiness of soul that goes along with drugs and other forms of self-abuse.
National Review Online
June 20, 2001
The problem of European foreign reporting in the United States has deepened to disastrous dimensions; a chasm yawns between its reporting and American reality.
National Review Online
June 4, 2001
Liberalssay that conservatives fail to live up to their own standards, but they fail to grasp the importance of upholding high standards by which even one's own conduct can be seriously faulted.
National Review Online
May 29, 2001
George Bush the Younger has got the vision thing, the youthful energy, and the patient easygoing practicality.
Wilson Quarterly
April 1, 2001
Journal of Democracy
April 1, 2001
National Journal Online
February 5, 2001
The Weekly Standard
January 15, 2001
Weekly Standard.
January 15, 2001
Book review of Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, edited by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington
The Enduring Principles of the American Founding
January 1, 2001
First Things
December 1, 2000
The Philadelphia Inquirer
October 25, 2000
National Review
September 25, 2000
Al Gore is trying to erect his presidency on the shameful act of teaching resentment of "the rich and powerful" to "working families."
The New York Times
September 4, 2000
I am pulling for Bush and Cheney, not Gore and Lieberman, and I am not Jewish but Roman Catholic.
First Things
August 1, 2000
First Things
June 1, 2000
American Outlook
May 1, 2000
The Public Interest
April 15, 2000
The authorpresents a commentary supportive of David Bosworth's The Spirit of Capitalism.
Public Interest
April 1, 2000
Washington Times
March 10, 2000
Washington Post
February 13, 2000
Review of How We Believe by Michael Shermer.
AEI Online
January 1, 2000
Developments within the medieval Catholic Church catalyzed the remarkable economic progress of the second millennium.
Wall Street Journal
December 23, 1999
Wall Street Journal
December 23, 1999
A review of the last millennium.
New York Times
December 19, 1999
Not since the first days of American independence have we seen such public expressions of faith.
New York Times
December 19, 1999
Not since the first days of American independence have we seen such public expressions of faith.
First Things
November 1, 1999
Religion & Liberty
July 1, 1999
New York Times
June 18, 1999
There is no issue on which public opinion is more affirmative than the desire for a moment of prayer every day in the public schools.
First Things
April 1, 1999
1999 Francis Boyer LectureAEI Annual Dinner
February 25, 1999
Novak's Francis Boyer Lectureon religion and the survival of republican principles. Deliveredat the 1999 AEI Annual Dinner.
Weekly Standard
February 1, 1999
Both Rabbi Heschel and Murray were greater men than those who criticize them.
Weekly Standard
December 28, 1998
Novak reviews review of by Peter Ackroyd's The Life Of Thomas More.
AEI Annual Dinner
December 7, 1998
University of Notre Dame
November 12, 1998
AEI Online
November 1, 1998
In his new encyclical, the Pope champions reason at a time when philosophers have lost confidence in it.
New York Times
October 16, 1998
A commitment to relativism is dangerous.
New York Times
October 16, 1998
First Things
September 1, 1998
Review of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes.
American Legion Magazine
September 1, 1998
The steady erosion of the belief that moral questions can be resolved by reason alone.
New York Times
May 24, 1998
Wall Street Journal
April 10, 1998
Nothing, perhaps, has so shapedAmerica as the annual celebrations of Passover and Easter.
Washington Post
January 26, 1998
Wall Street Journal
January 23, 1998
The Weekly Standard
January 19, 1998
Review of Chronicle of the Popes, Saints & Sinners, and Lives of the Popes.
Washington Post
October 19, 1997
Review of The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI by Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky.
National Review
May 5, 1997
USA Today
December 20, 1996
Washingtonian
December 1, 1996
AEI Online
December 5, 1995
Today's ideological debates about the fairness of income distribution need to move beyond questions of economics to consider the philosophical and theological dimensions of inequality.
First Things
December 1, 1995
Rising Tide
September 1, 1995
Wall Street Journal
August 18, 1995
Review of Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin Barber.
Washington Times
July 2, 1995
Washington Times
May 26, 1995
Washington Post
May 21, 1995
Review of Pope John Paul II by Tad Szulc.
First Things
April 1, 1995
Wall Street Journal
December 27, 1994
Washington Post
December 25, 1994
National Review
December 5, 1994
Review of The Bell Curve by Charles Murray.
National Review
December 5, 1994
Wall Street Journal
October 27, 1994
Review of Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II.
Washington Post
October 2, 1994
Review of The Rainbow People of God by Desmond Tutu.
First Things
September 1, 1994
The Templeton Address
May 5, 1994
Los Angeles Times
March 18, 1994
Washington Times
November 25, 1993
Washington Times
October 24, 1993
Forbes
September 27, 1993
First Things
August 1, 1993
Review of Adam Smith in His Time and Ours by Jerry Muller.
Indianapolis Star
May 17, 1993
Washington Times
May 11, 1993
Canadian Catholic Review
May 1, 1993
Review of The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor.
First Things
March 1, 1993
Washington Times
February 5, 1993
Journal of Business Ethics
January 1, 1993
First Things
January 1, 1993
Washington Times
December 25, 1992
The American Legion
December 1, 1992
Los Angeles Times
August 11, 1992
National Review
July 20, 1992
Capital University Law Review
July 1, 1992
National Review
May 11, 1992
Christian Century
April 22, 1992
Review of Mortimer Adler's Truth in Religion and Have Without Have-Nots.
First Things
March 1, 1992
Fortune
February 24, 1992
Review of F. Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man.
Forbes
September 30, 1991
American Legion Magazine
September 1, 1991
First Things
June 1, 1991
Freedom Review
May 1, 1991
EMAIL
PRINT
SAVE
