In their book What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George draw our attention to the question that matters most in the marriage debate—what marriage is—and make a reasonable and compassionate argument for marriage as a one-man one-woman union.
Naïve proponents and skeptics of the natural law often point to the world “out there” as the source of objective truth (or lack thereof), but the truths of the natural law are to be found through the actions of our intellect.
It’s far too easy when bickering about this or that policy, and particularly when the policy is morally charged, to miss the values modeled by good men and women when we disagree on the means.
One can neither deny nor question the natural law’s persuasiveness except by asking questions, conducting inquiries, achieving understandings, reaching judgments, and making choices—all of which are the natural law at work.
Unless we ask the “what” and “why” in ethical debate, we aren’t doing ethics. Debating ethics requires intellectual conversion and thus a commitment to intelligible reality.
In order to stop our present decline, we must transcend our natural tendency to retreat into factions and instead begin to sacrifice for the common good.
To take offense does not free us from further argument or criticism. Instead, offense demands ongoing criticism between partners in ethical discourse as a recognition of their fundamental human equality.
Newly defined and vigorously enforced rights have proliferated even as they are uprooted from any philosophic grounding.
Custom and tradition, far from being necessarily irrational, are often the vehicles of guiding and binding reason.
Civility is at the foundation of democratic society, but our educational institutions have lost their manners and the grace of gentility.
The fiftieth anniversary of oral contraceptives is a reminder of all the things the Pill lets us forget.
A recent First Things article on natural law misses the mark.
A good deal of online commentary about a recent ecumenical statement misunderstands the nature of human reason.