Ken Masugi and Father James V. Schall, S.J., engaged in a fascinating "Advent" dialogue (transcribed for your edification and available over at The Claremont Institute's website).  In it, Father Schall addresses a number of points, from the President's recent remarks in Oslo to the Pope's recent (and somewhat controversial) encyclical "Charity In Truth." 

Some highlights:

"Christianity wants to say that we can know how men ought to live, but that we also knows the limits of this world and the limits of human virtue and the extent of human vice. One of the great political tasks of Christianity is constantly to remind us that we have not here a lasting city. All modern ideology, usually cast in terms of rights, duties, and values, claims that we can and that religion is the principal impediment to its being attained soon, in this world."

and this formulation is spectacular:

"[W]e are intended for more than we are by nature. That we are is, in fact, our experience and why we can never be satisfied with anything less than the eternal life to which we are destined and for which we are created in the first place."

Read the whole thing . . . (a few times).