Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Ordinary People by Cathleen Kaveny: “Where does concern for ordinary people—or better to say, the ordinariness of people—fit within the framework of Catholic social teaching? In my view, it is one way of reflecting on what it means for everyone to be created in the image and likeness of God. It draws on the Catholic natural-law tradition by asking us to reflect on our common human nature. And it points toward recent magisterial treatments of solidarity: Pope Francis’s call to brotherhood and sisterhood in his encyclical Fratelli tutti (2020) points to the blessed ordinariness of each of us.”

The Crucial Issue of the 21st Century by David Brooks: “The central argument of the 21st century is no longer over the size of government. The central argument of this century is over who can best strengthen the social order.”

Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good? by David Brooks: “We don’t need to entirely reject the Enlightenment project, but we probably need to recalibrate the culture so that people are more willing to sacrifice some freedom of autonomy for the sake of the larger community. We need to offer the coming generations an education in morals as rigorous as their technical and career education. As the ancients understood, this involves the formation of the heart and the will as much as the formation of the rational mind.”

Theology for the Drastic Changes Coming in Catholic Higher Education by Jason King: “Finally, core theology cannot be separated from spirituality and personal meaning. Studying theology in a Catholic context should not be a purely intellectual exercise. It should cultivate a deeper sense of purpose, vocation, and engagement with fundamental human questions. For Catholic students, this may involve reflecting on their faith and relationship with God. For students from other religious traditions—or no religious tradition at all—core theology provides a framework for grappling with questions about existence, justice, human dignity, and the search for meaning.”

Catholicism as Content by Nathan Dufour Oglesby: “Consider the difference between the aesthetic logic of the Gospel and that of clickbait. In clickbait, the aesthetic value of the visual is sheerly instrumental: it is designed to provoke, to anger, to convert attention into engagement. Like an advertisement, its purpose is to redirect the viewer, to serve a goal beyond itself. Propaganda works similarly, organizing aesthetic cues toward an ideological end. By contrast, the Gospel is not akin to advertisement or propaganda. It is closer to art. Its aesthetic value is not merely instrumental, but intrinsic.”

This is what judicial overreach looks like by the Washington Post: “Many Republican members of Congress who voted for this reconciliation bill no doubt dislike abortion and want to defund Planned Parenthood because it is the country’s leading abortion provider. That doesn’t make the Medicaid restrictions illegitimate. The budget process is inherently political, and Congress’s tax-and-spending decisions almost always help some groups and hurt others. Republican budgets will tilt toward conservative priorities. Democratic budgets will tilt toward liberal ones.”

What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones by Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt: “Granting them more freedom may feel uncomfortable at first. But if parents want their kids to put down their phones, they need to open the front door.”

Elite colleges conspire to use early admissions to inflate costs, lawsuit says by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: “Early decision admissions policies allow students to apply ahead of the regular admissions deadline, giving them a better chance of acceptance. Students pledge to attend if a college offers a seat, but the acceptance decision often comes before students know how much financial aid the school will provide. Binding early-decision plans prevent students from receiving and comparing offers from other schools. That setup, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Massachusetts, puts students at a disadvantage and lets colleges keep prices high. The lawsuit argues that schools are not incentivized to provide generous financial aid to early decision applicants because they know no other school can compete by topping their offer. Those policies create and maintain a conspiracy between schools that reduces price competition and violates antitrust law, the complaint says.”