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Terence Sweeney

Terence Sweeney is an assistant teaching professor in the Honors Program and the Humanities Department at Villanova University. He has written for America Magazine, First Things, Plough Magazine, Church Life Journal, National Catholic Register and other publications.

Getting the Emphasis Right on Catholicism and Immigration: A Reply to Feser

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We get truth in Feser's essay, but what is needed is “caritas in veritate in re sociali.” To write about how we ought to treat migrants and emphasize our rights while neglecting the emphasis of Scripture, and deemphasizing what Catholic Social Thought emphasizes, is to lose that intimate connection of love in truth.

The Euthanasia of Ivan Ilyich: Recovering Good Lives and Deaths in the Age of Assisted Dying

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The direction of our culture is increasingly toward “death pods” where we will die alone, because we, like Ivan, have refused to really live together. Resisting such a culture of solitary and uncared for assisted dying will take legislation, but it will also require that we spend some time with Ilyich and try to recover the goodness of a good life and of a good death. S
newborn baby

Assigned at Birth?

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To assign is to flail and thrash about as we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. But to wait in the ultrasound office or in the delivery room to find out, to then share with others in this first discovery of our child’s identity, to delight equally in male and female, is to recover our fundamental vulnerability to the gifts given to us.
Glory of the Florentine saints, fresco by Vincenzo Meucci in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy

Why Religion and the Humanities Are in Decline

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What is useful is inherently teleological: calling something “useful” invokes the question “useful for what?” But modernity resists this question by multiplying means without any clear ends. We live an infinite regress of usefulness with little sense of the point of our labors. In a world that only understands useful things, interest in humanities and religious faith (both of which consider human purpose) will inevitably decline.

Augustine Isn’t the Political Pessimist You Think He Is

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Michael Lamb’s A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought is an important intervention not only in Augustine studies, but also in our politics of stagnation and hopelessness. Lamb shows that if we hope rightly, we can work in and for the pilgrim city and for earthly cities. Augustine’s descriptions of life’s evils and turmoils should awaken us to life’s uncertainties, our lack of self-sufficiency, and our need for mercy.
catherine of siena

What Secular Humanism Misses

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The term “humanist” is disputed because what it means to be a human is itself disputed. But much of the world has forgotten this dispute. It defaults to secular humanism, which doesn’t look beyond the self; it is a self-referential philosophy of life. The heart of Catholic humanism, by contrast, is knowing that human beings can only be understood in relation to God.
January 6th rioters climbing onto the Capitol Building

January 6th and Our Fatal Defenses of Political Violence

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We are increasingly becoming afflicted by the who/whom logic of Lenin. For Lenin, when it comes to political aggression, what matters is who performs the action and upon whom it is performed. But, in reality, the whom you attack is a who in reality. Just as you are a self, so too are they a self.

Old Atheists and New Theists

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If the New Atheists were able to convince people to leave, then we too might be able to convince some to come back. Ideas and writing can change lives. If the New Atheists did it, then we Christian writers can be a saving remnant and help write people back into the faith.
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