The Best of "The Public Square" Book 2 [antikvár]

Introduction"The time has come, " the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:Of shoes and ships and sealing waxOf cabbages and kings And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings. ""Inclusivity" is taken to be a very good thing these days. I do not claim to be as inclusive as Lewis Carroll. There is, for instance, nothing about cabbages or winged pigs in this book. But the reader may come to suspect that almost everything else is included in these little essays and asides. It really cannot be helped. The organization that publishes First Things, of which "The Public Square" is a monthly part, is called the Institute on Religion and Public Life. What of real interest is not included in "religion and public life"? Especially if you believe, as I do, that public life is mainly about culture, and at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion.I am a Catholic. There should be no doubt about that. But First Things is emphatically ecumenical and interreli-gious, the last term meaning mainly Christian and Jewish. To be Catholic is also to be lower case catholic. The book you have in your hands is not only catholic in its religious and cultural reach but is also catholic in the many subjects engaged. Theology, philosophy, politics, education, bioethics, law, marriage, child rearing, and much else get their turns sometimes treated seriously (although never, I hope, pon-