I’m still not clear on what the “truthiness” business is all about, but “getting at the truth” seems a more urgent undertaking.

Hence I was taken with the column in today’s Boston Globe by Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried.

Fried writes:

There is such a thing as truth; that is why Holocaust deniers are foolsor liars. But that is exactly why there can be no such thing as officialtruth — truth endorsed, policed, and enforced by the power of thestate. Truth is above politics, and judges politics, which is whypolitics has no authority to proclaim it.


“Power” and “authority:” Pilate and Jesus. Even if, in the short term, power prevails.

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, has contributed to Commonweal for fifty years. A selection of his essays and reviews, some of which first appeared in Commonweal, has been published as Christ Brings All Newness (Word on Fire Academic).

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