Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was the younger brother of the famous Karl Polanyi, one of the staunchest critics historically of Western society and capitalist values. Trained as a physician, Polanyi undertook a career as a chemist.

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Girolamo Zanchi

On February 2, 1516, Girolamo Zanchi was born in the northern Italian city of Alazano. Orphaned at age fourteen, Zanchi joined the local monastery of the Augustinian Order of Regular Canons.

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Bartholomew de Las Casas

Bartholomew de Las Casas was born in Seville, Spain. He studied law at the University of Salamanca, where the Dominicans were wrestling with moral issues raised by the conquest of the New World.

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James Fenimore Cooper

James Cooper—he added “Fenimore” later—was born on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey. He came from a devout, but eclectic religious family. While his parents were Quakers, they also attended Episcopal and Presbyterian services.

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Carl F. H. Henry

Born on January 22, 1913, to German immigrants in New York City, Carl F. H. Henry was not raised in a religious family environment. In 1933, while Henry was editor of The Smithtown Star and a stringer for The New York Times, Henry met with a man named Gene Bedford.

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John Winthrop

John Winthrop was born in Suffolk, England, and grew up at Groton Manor, his father's estate in the English countryside. Preparing to take his father's place as the lord of Groton Manor, Winthrop studied law. He wanted to obtain the expertise needed to handle landlord-tenant disputes, collect rents, and deal with government authorities.

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Ferdinando Galiani

Born in Chieti, Italy, Ferdinando Galiani was raised in Naples. Galiani was the nephew of the famous archbishop Coelestino Galiani. The archbishop made sure his nephew received a top quality education. The intention was for Galiani to serve the church as a member of the clergy someday.

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St. Bernardino of Siena

St. Bernardino of Siena, the “Apostle of Italy,” was a missionary, reformer, and scholastic economist. He was born of the noble family of Albizeschi in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. After taking care of the sick during a great plague in Siena in 1400, he entered the Franciscan order. He became a well-known and popular preacher, traveling throughout Italy on foot. He was offered bishoprics three times during his ministry, which he refused because he would have had to give up what he felt was his primary calling, that of a missionary.

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Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When he was eight-years-old, Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with some relatives of his master. Shortly after his arrival his new mistress taught him the alphabet. Her husband forbade her to continue this instruction, but Douglass was undeterred.

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Karol Wojtyła

Long before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla (b. 1920) had identified the center of his life's work: The Christian defense of the human person. His defense of human liberty, properly understood, led to the spread of that same liberty behind the Iron Curtain. And his defense of human dignity was part of the same Christian vision.

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Ronald Reagan

Born in Illinois, Ronald Reagan might have been remembered by history as a famous film actor. While serving as a captain in the U.S. Army in the 1940s, he made training films for troops. After he was discharged from the army in 1945, he signed a million dollar contract with Warner Brothers. By the end of his long Hollywood career, he had over 120 film and television credits.

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Rafael Termes

It is true that democracy is the best of the political systems, in that it guarantees, through universal suffrage, a peaceful changeover of power. But democracy and its instrument, majority rule, is not a method to investigate the truth. Truth can be acquired with evidence, conclusive demonstration, or another's trustworthy testimony; but it must not be subject to a vote.

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