The 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes is generally regarded as the founder of the modern social contract theory. Hobbes often joked that he was born prematurely when his mother heard the approaching Spanish Armada in 1588. "Fear and I were born twins," he said, reflecting his conviction that the fear of death and the need for security are the basis of social organization.

In the late 1960s, Pierre Trudeau made his famous proclamation that the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Trudeau's declaration summed up the prevailing sentiment in the Western world on the nature of human rights – that they represent a zone of privacy which no other force may invade.

At least since the time of Plato, philosophers have been speculating on the nature of the human person. However, while one may call this speculation, it is not a hollow academic exercise. For one's perspective on the human person determines one's action. And a "philosophy of man" widely held in society goes a long way to determining the nature of that society.

I was a child of the 1960s. Reaching adolescence at about the same time the hippies became popular and the radical student movement began to burst into public consciousness, I thought I glimpsed the seeds of a bright new future for the world.

Modern Catholic social teaching is generally seen as having begun with Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (On New Things).

One of the least-examined assumptions of our supposedly enlightened age is the belief that history can be compared with an individual's growth from childhood to maturity. Just as the child leaves behind its imaginary world of toys and Santa Claus, so too does the mature society abandon its comforting notions of God, objective morality and other "superstitions."

I believe God wants me to be president," George W. Bush once said. Well, perhaps. One's personal call from God is a mysterious thing and God's "plan" for human history is even harder for mortals to fathom.

When Copernicus showed that, despite appearances, the world was not flat nor the centre of the universe, we began to gain a much more accurate picture of the cosmos.

The Christian vocation is quite simply the vocation to love.

The Trinity itself is a communion of infinite love. Because of that love, God created humanity and then sent the Son to reveal to us the fullness of that love.

The Catholic Church's contribution to public debate in Canada is increasingly portrayed as a morally conservative agenda opposed to same-sex marriage and opposed to abortion. To be sure, those are major issues, ones of which the Church tends to speak not from a religious perspective, but from a view of what is good for the human person.