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Medical Aid in Dying

A New Case for Medical-Aid-In-Dying? 

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Apart from any further consideration of ultimate intention, euthanasia and assisted suicide are actions that directly and purposely seek to kill the patient for the “crime” of being ill or sick. They necessarily contradict our human dignity and cannot be ordered to the love of God and neighbor, including and especially the sick and suffering. 
Church of the Assumption St. Paul MN

The Bookshelf: Why Catholics Should Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday  

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From the Gospel, to Acts, to the Church Fathers, to the doctrine of the two swords and the freedom of the Church, to the recognition in modern times of the freedom of conscience as an unalienable right at the foundation of a free society: the very ideas of human equality, freedom, and limited government would never have borne the fruit we see in American society without the Christian—and Catholic—intellectual tradition supplying the argument.
Milky Way

We’re Going to the Stars. Do We Still Know Why?  

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A civilization that can reach the stars but has forgotten why it wanted to in the first place is not a triumphant civilization. It is a lost one.
video games

Games Gone Wild: How Metrics and Gamification Distort Reality and Capture Values 

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Games might just be one way to shake us free from the shackles of metrics and reclaim the human goods that deserve much more than a number. 
unborn baby

Why Opposition to Abortion Requires Precision about Intention 

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Abortion opponents have not provided a good answer to the objection that restricting abortion will endanger pregnant women.  
battlefield cemetery

War, Restraint, and the Christian Conscience 

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The church’s task is neither to baptize the sword nor to pretend the sword has no place in a fallen world. It is to stand beneath the cross, telling the truth. 
American revolution

Romans 13 and the American Revolution 

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As St. Augustine reminds us, “men build cities, and men destroy cities, but there is also the City of God, and that’s where we all belong.” Christians live in both. The task is not to sanctify our politics, but to order them rightly in light of that higher allegiance.
authenticity

Authenticity, RIP: Lionel Trilling Revisited 

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Authenticity was a cultural force that risked destroying culture itself. In the early twenty-first century, the time has perhaps come to rediscover it.  
Eucharist

Against Excarnation 

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The immersive world flees embodiment and death. It embraces excarnation. But absent Incarnation, the world languishes and grows old, bereft of Eucharist. 
Blaise Pascal

Betting on God 

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Atheism is at least as much an act of faith as theism is. 
abortion pill

From Promised Autonomy to Delivered Harm: Structural Violence in the Era of Mail-Order Abortion Drugs 

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Government systems should be designed with care in mind, not weaponized to harm abortion-vulnerable women. 
Mother's Day

Mother’s Day and the Foolishness of Speech

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As a mother, I am coming to understand more concretely—and thus more deeply—what self-emptying love must look like, and thus I am coming to appreciate Christ's coming more deeply.
Socrates

The History of Education in Six Words 

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In recent decades, many have committed themselves to the recovery and practice of classical education. It has until recently been a close-knit affair, but in the last half decade the growth and success of the movement has prompted those outside to ask those inside what, precisely, the thing is.
Christian marriage

What Binds Marriage Forever? 

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Only a revitalization of the richness of Christian marriage will suffice as a bulwark against the insanity, exploitation, and selfishness of the gender and sexual revolutions.
Fork in the road

Nietzsche, Jesus, and the Task of Being Human 

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Both Jesus and Nietzsche announce in the same sort of bold terms their own visions of life and death; prosperity and adversity. They set before us two paths to consider: one leading toward the flourishing life and one leading toward death. One toward liberation and one into oppression. Which path will we choose? 
MAGA rally

What’s Behind the Making of the MAGA New Right? 

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Field’s account is eye-opening. At the same time, as a professed “liberal,” she exhibits elements of excessive partisanship that weaken her argument. 
Pericles

Why the Left Must Recover a Sense of the Past 

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A left that developed a renewed appreciation for the past would have a rich political vision, deeper connection with popular traditions, and a more grounded set of values.
Sistine Chapel

Catholic Converts, Then and Now 

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While conversion may involve a love of beauty, a hunger for doctrinal security, the frisson of transgression, or a desire for the forgiveness of sins, it is ultimately a deep mystery of grace and therefore transcends our understanding.
war

On Strategy, Speed, and Just War

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Life is such that doing right, attending to the very real and inescapable moral fabric of the universe, is not some hapless, wooly-headed foolishness. It is instead, or at least it can be, the most effective way of pursuing a just and decent order in a fragmented and fallen world.
Supreme Court of Canada

Who Best Protects Rights? 

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We tend to confuse the substantive protection of rights with the position that courts should always have the final word on what those rights are. But without slighting courts, we should also recognize the roles of the other two branches of government in defining rights. 
Church vs. state

What is Freedom of Religion? 

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We need philosophical arguments to counter the empty voluntarism of our time, and this is a challenge the Church should meet head-on.
American frontier

The Bookshelf: The Frontier on Page and Screen 

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As our country marks its 250th birthday, and as we look to colonize an extraterrestrial orb, the western-become-science fiction appears to be on the way to becoming fact.
Shakespeare

The Bard for the Dance Between the Sexes 

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Marriage and family are among the basic goods of the good life, of flourishing, of delights. Shakespeare is cheering us on. May we take heart and enter the dance. 
university students

What Can Be Done about the Universities? 

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What are the options for scholars or funders committed to encouraging more bright students and thus improving our university system?