A new book defends the view that parents have primary authority over their children. The role of the state is to help parents, not to take over tasks that are properly parental.
Author: Christopher O. Tollefsen (Christopher Tollefsen)
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The Gospel of Happiness
Christopher Kaczor’s The Gospel of Happiness brings new insight to Christian practice by applying the lessons of positive psychology to it. His approach shows how both religious and secular seekers of happiness can learn and benefit from the other tradition.
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Pope Francis, the Zika Virus, and Contraception
Moral reasons exist for the use of contraceptives to defend against sexual assault, thanks to the principle of double effect—but these reasons do not apply to using contraception because of the Zika virus.
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Rights Through Obligations: The Case of Free Speech
Some rights are grounded in the need for agents to fulfill their perceived responsibilities, including their obligation to pursue knowledge. This obligation, along with the communal nature of inquiry, supports a right to free speech that acquires particular stringency in those communities where inquiry is most essential.
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In the Cave: How Automation Changes the Way We Interact with Our World
Good work connects us more deeply to the world around us. By contrast, automation can often alienate us from the physical world, changing the way we think and act.
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Why the “Catholic” “Pro-Life” Case for the Bomb Fails
No one who claims to be pro-life can say that women, children, the elderly, and indeed, the unborn of a nation may be legitimately targeted with death for the sake of the consequences, however beneficial.
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Marco Rubio Is Right: The Life of a New Human Being Begins at Conception
Senator Rubio is on the firmest possible scientific ground when he says that science shows that the child in the womb, from the very point of successful fertilization, is indeed a human being.
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On the Dangers of Thanking God for the Atom Bomb
There are often great temptations to violate the absolute norms against intentional killing and against lying. On the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan, we should remember what is at stake in such decisions and how agents constitute themselves in their choosing.
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Gender Identity
Gender is a way of communicating truths or falsehoods about one’s sex and its corresponding social and cultural roles. An age of gender confusion and rejection calls for reflection on important issues that, in an upright age, would hardly arise. The second in a two-part series.
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Sex Identity
As animals that reproduce sexually, humans in the paradigm case are either male or female, with the sexes specified by reproductive roles they can potentially fulfill. According to this account, it is impossible for someone to change his or her sex, and all attempts to do so involve mutilation. The first of a two-part series.
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God, Death, and Capital Punishment
It is philosophically and theologically defensible for Catholics to believe that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong.
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J.S. Mill and the Pro-Life Cause
In spite of its many problematic aspects, the political thought of J.S. Mill provides a low but solid foundation for the essential convictions of the pro-life movement: that the unborn, in virtue of their common humanity, deserve the full protection of the law.
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Incest and Pornography: More Similar Than We Think
Although we uphold the cultural taboo on incest, we accept something with precisely the same negative effect on integrity, marriage, and family: pornography.
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A Caution against Compatibility: On Natural Rights and Natural Law
While Adam Seagrave offers a provocative and original reading of Locke, his assumptions about the self and ownership are deeply problematic.
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Science and the Embryo
Senator Rubio was on solid ground in saying science has settled the question of when a human being's life begins. Science does not need to wait on philosophy’s pronouncements to investigate what the human embryo is and when its life begins.
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Intention, Choice, and the Right to Life: A Response to Nigel Biggar
“Intention” and “choice” are complex concepts, but we must achieve clarity about them in order to protect human life and upright willing, as we should never choose to damage or destroy human life by intentionally killing a person.
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In Defense of the Innocent
Although Nigel Biggar’s new book on just war has many strengths, the author gets himself into a moral muddle over the question whether the deaths of innocent non-combatants can be deliberately chosen in war.
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Piety, Justice, and Animals: A Response to Charles Camosy
Both natural law thought and the Catechism agree: animals are not part of the same justice community as human beings, because they do not possess the dignity that comes from existing as a rational being.
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Abortion: A Public Issue
Contrary to the judgment of the Supreme Court, abortion is not a private issue. It snuffs out the existence of a member of the human community—a person like us with a radical capacity for reason and freedom.
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Our Obligations to Animals
Because animals are not truly our equals, advocating that we should treat them as such weakens the pro-life cause. But animals are meant to be part of our households, and the way we treat them should express beauty and virtue, not decay, pride, and domination.
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What Our Obligations to Other Animals Are Not
Charles Camosy’s new book argues that we should treat animals with the same Christian justice that underlies our treatment of other people. But human beings and other animals are not fundamentally equal in the way that all human beings are, as free and rational beings created in the image of God.
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Presidential Lies and Political Ownership
When President Obama lied about the Affordable Care Act, he substituted his own self-governance and self-constitution for that of the American people.
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Charity with a Conscience
We all have a moral obligation to use our surplus wealth to help those in need, but we should do so in a way that is effective, fair, and in accordance with our own vocations.
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Allison Benedikt’s Immodest Proposal
A rant against private schools should teach all of us something about the purposes of education, and what responsible parents should seek for their children.
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Gosnell, Law, and Modest First Steps
The Gosnell case shows us that a society’s laws teach, and if they teach a lesson of injustice they will corrupt its people over time. Indeed, contemporary abortion jurisprudence undermines the very notion of natural rights and constitutional government.