Author: Thomas Fleming

This text is being made available at no cost for a limited time.  Soon, readers will have the opportunity to become subscribers. How are we to take these and other terrifying pronouncements?  St. Augustine quite properly regarded the Sermon on the Mount as a the loftiest compendium of Christian ethics, and, while he certainly recognized the difficulties to be encountered in living up to such a standard, he thought it was necessary for us to do our best.  Thomas Aquinas, in different ways, sought to distinguish the more practical from the more impossible strands in the Sermon, Thomas, by distinguishing...

The fortunate reign of Andronikos I was followed by succession problems that would become more serious in later days, but the long reign of Manuel I was prosperous, as Trebizond became a key player in Black Sea shipping.  His brother George, who succeeded him, fell victim to the plotting of foolish nobles who did not appear to appreciate what a dangerous world they lived in.  His younger also brother faced civil war.  During this period, the Byzantine Empire was restored by the Palaiologos clan, who would have had little regard for potential rivals in Trebizond.  Family quarrels and noble conspiracies...

Like most peoples everywhere, ancient Jews respected power and success.  In looking back at their own history, they admired the exploits of Joshua, Gideon, and Samson, violent men who would not have been out of place in the American West.  King David and his son Solomon were among their greatest heroes.  David was a man of war who smote his enemies and built a powerful (albeit minuscule) kingdom; Solomon was proverbial for his wealth and women as well as for his wisdom and power. For more recent heroes, Jews could turn for inspiration to the Maccabees, who had led a...

Pope Francis has been instructing Europeans to open their homes to Syrian migrants.  Obviously, many Europeans, Christian and secularist alike, might feel some reluctance about welcoming people from a country where the rule of law does not seem to exist and where it is not unusual to engage in civil war and violence against those who do not share every jot and tittle of your brand of Islam. For secularists, unless they are strict adherents to the Marxist-globalist ideology that even Bernie Sanders dissents from, practical considerations should be enough.  Christians, however, get uneasy.  Our religion, after all, teaches us...