The Entrance into Jerusalem

Our Spring 2009 issue begins with a brief statement regarding the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama to receive an honorary law degree and give the commencement address at the university’s graduation in May. . . .

“The burden of ‘witness’ rightly understood is not that one is unwilling to dialogue with another, but that the dialogue called for in given cases demands clarity from the outset regarding the gravity of what is at stake.”

“Christianity’s contribution to our culture does not consist in accepting the great rift that divides our modern world, but rather in healing it. The resurrection of the flesh is precisely a witness that this healing is possible.”

“We cannot see God face to face, but he has graciously consented to let us see where he dwells.”

“The drama of salvation is the social landscape of Christian ethics: worship, in the liturgy of the Word and Eucharist, is the formative praxis that shapes our vision and virtuous dispositions to act because God is acting to bring us into trinitarian life.”

“Balthasar, in following Irenaeus, does nothing more than take up once again a way of doing philosophy-theology that is proper to patristics: the theme of being cannot be seen except from God.”

“We need political philosophy as moral philosophy which does not simply teach about ultimate truths to be realized, but about the intrinsic morality of a public conception of justice that is able to provide common ground for citizens who want to cooperate peacefully for a common good.”