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faith and fiction

Jon Fosse’s Septology and Faith in Fiction

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The phenomenon now arising around Fosse’s work, crowned by his widely honored and beloved Septology, supports the thought that the novelistic tradition’s centuries of exploring this tension have not yet come to an end. Fictionists of faith in the twenty-first century—far from being marginalized, suppressed, or silenced—face a wider horizon for hope and for endeavor than many may have ever dreamed of seeing. What remains to be seen is what writers will choose to do with such a vista of freedom.
written and unwritten constitutions

Written and Unwritten Constitutions

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The analogy between individual and political constitutions illustrates the fact that no legal order can be fully encompassed by written instruments, and so it must be elaborated by reference to its underlying historical and philosophic dimensions.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

How We Got “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”

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Moore’s book reveals the precarious slope on which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness rest: there needs to be a firm belief that a better life tomorrow is within our reach. If we lack that belief, the backsliding into mundane conformity and the demand for a government of autocratic direction can easily undo all that the past few centuries have bequeathed us.
Speaker Weatherill, House of Commons

A Covenant Torn Asunder

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All hyperbole aside, the underlying ethic is clear: a leader of men, a representative of our ethical ideals, must dress according to the dignity of his office. Anyone—officeholder, leader, and layman alike—must dress with great dignity when executing actions of moral importance.
Catholic Church in Nicaragua

Ortega and the Church: A Cautionary Tale

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The revolutionary priests bear more responsibility for the Church’s present hardship. They did not merely violate canon law; they did so for the sake of revolution. Now the Church is suffering under a dictator that that revolution produced. This should serve as a cautionary tale to would-be revolutionaries of all political stripes. To make revolution is to set in motion unpredictable and destructive forces from which one may not escape.
Children's books

The Bookshelf: Impressionable Minds

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What young readers need and deserve are models of virtue they can aspire to emulate.
Alexandra Hudson, The Soul of Civility

Discovering the Soul of Civility: An Interview with Alexandra Hudson

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Politeness is manners, it’s technique, it’s etiquette, it’s behavior, it’s at the superficial, external level alone. But civility is a disposition of the heart. It’s a way of seeing others as our moral equals and treating them with the respect that they’re owed and deserve.
hostages

Hostages, Deterrence, and Israeli Strategy

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Israel’s obligations to its citizens still at liberty broaden its military options, because failure to strike militants holding hostages in Gaza means endangering civilians in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The judgments to be made here are vague and imperfect, but so long as the IDF doesn’t know hostages are going to die in a strike, a strike will often be the best way for Israel to execute its obligations to all Israelis.
the cellophane cross

The Cellophane Cross

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If we love someone, we must be willing to correct his errors. We should fiercely debate, that debate may refine our intellects and help us fiercely seek truth.
Max Weber, Germany

The Use and Abuse of Max Weber

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Surely one way of fending off the Right, a way that does not involve waiting for a charismatic savior, is to reject policies that are destroying American cities. There is not an iota of criticism of such tendencies of the contemporary Left in Brown’s book; yet she would like to assure us that the next leftist charismatic leader will be animated by an ethic of responsibility.
ethics advice column

Ask Chris Tollefsen: An Ethics Advice Column

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I’ll certainly offer advice—my best account of what seems reasonable in the situation. But it is only advice: everyone who writes needs to make an independent assessment about whether the guidance I offer is sound.
Homeless

The War on Poverty at Fifty: How to Craft Policy to Help America’s Poor

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Government may be able to provide material assistance, but it has failed to address the deeper causes of poverty. Worse, it has discouraged the most important defenses against poverty in America—work and marriage.
Confederate statue

The Legacy of White Supremacy: Why Confederate Monuments Should Come Down

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It is a natural thing for southerners to be drawn to Lee’s memory and to look up in admiration at a statue in his likeness. But the fact remains: such statues say to black Americans, in the voice of the unreconstructed white majority, “We’re back in charge, and don’t you forget it.”
Being human in the modern world

Being Human in the Modern World: Why Personalism Matters for Education and Culture

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How would you answer the basic question of philosophical anthropology: What does it mean to be human? How does that answer affect your life?
modern couples

The Truth about Men, Women, and Sex

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Recent revelations about sexual harassment, assault, and abuse underscore certain blunt realities about men, women, and sex. How can we confront those realities in a way that leads to less sexual violence?
family

Modern Families and the Messes We Make

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Assistive reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization not only involve serious medical risks, they also disrupt family life and commodify human beings.
Public Discourse

Public Discourse at 15: Resisting Evil without Losing Our Souls

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In the past fifteen years, we’ve published articles on the moral, cultural, religious, and political issues of our time, including the most controversial and sensitive; but we have done so in a manner of which we can be proud, respecting the intellect and personhood of our readers, interlocutors, and intellectual contestants.
Jonathan Edwards

Sinners in the Hands of a Beautiful God

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In this new book—intended to bring Edwards “into the twenty-first century”—Marsden has returned to the Edwards he first discovered in his twenties. The New England thinker’s “invigorating emphasis on the dynamic beauty of God at the heart of reality” grabbed him then and has not let him go. As Marsden says, “You don’t get tired of beauty.”  
Presidential council on bioethics

George W. Bush’s Bioethics Council, Revisited

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The silent disappearance of the presidential bioethics council breaks fifty years of tradition. Sadly, this break came at a perilous time for bioethics.
Vatican

Papal Power and the Obedience of the Faithful

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While a book like John Rist’s is diminished by its flaws, it’s not entirely unfair about our current moment.
mortal beauty

To What Serves Mortal Beauty?

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The dark side of overvaluing beauty is to seek to manipulate it into our own image, to manage it for ourselves. Hopkins says to leave it alone.
immanent frame

Life in the Ruins: Keeping Faith within the Immanent Frame 

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There is no romance without the real presence of God, no sacramental imagination without the sacraments, and the wonders of fantasy cannot be asserted of primary reality itself.
Death at 50

“Death” at Fifty: Ernest Becker and the Immortality Project

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By embracing the fact that we do not belong to ourselves, we are not “our own person,” we may discover that responsibility for our dignity in both life and death belongs to God and to others, as it does to our own choices. The acknowledgment of human vulnerability and dependence may well be the antidote to the fear and anxiety at the root of the modern denial of death. 
Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi, Father of Modernity

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Francis of Assisi teaches us that those who want to embrace the joys of this life must also embrace suffering. Our forgetfulness of this truth could explain the current crisis of our civilization.
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