Progressivism and Power, by Randall Smith

“Know thyself.”  These were the words written above the temple doors of the oracle at Delphi. They are words that have remained a counsel of wisdom through the ages. They were the words with which Pope St. John Paul II began his great encyclical Fides et Ratio (“Faith and Reason”)

In that encyclical – an intellectual tour de force that should have inspired a renaissance in Catholic education, but sadly hasn’t – John Paul II spoke of the “fundamental questions” that “have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart.”  The answers people give to these questions, he says, will “decide the direction they seek to give to their lives.” …