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Search Results for: tollefsen – Page 3

Development, Capital Punishment, and Dignitatis Humanae

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Despite the vast amount of ink spilled in the current controversy over capital punishment, there’s been a real hesitancy to make explicit its analogy with the longer-running and arguably more important debate respecting the Church’s teaching on religious liberty.

Racism, the Legacy Museum, and the Costs of Self-Deception

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When we lie to ourselves about the moral status of other human beings, we not only unjustly injure other people, we also injure ourselves and our culture. We transform ourselves into a people who believe the lie. The costs of self-deception are internal and reflexive as well as external and consequential.

Can States “Confess” Religious Belief? Should They?

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The confessing state exceeds the limits of its authority, either by acting to no good effect, or by acting contrary to good effect. Thus, the confessing state seems inappropriate as a matter not simply of prudence, but of principle.

Physician-Assisted Suicide and Personal Action: Responding to the Law

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We can’t afford to live without physicians who are devoted to always healing and caring, and never harming. Requesting physician-assisted suicide, like legalizing it, erodes that devotion. A refusal to ask, even on the part of those not committed to the inviolability of human life, helps sustain that devotion.

The Deficits of the iPhone Generation

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Members of iGen suffer from serious intellectual and moral deficits: they are ill-informed, uninterested in pursuing relevant information, passionate without being active, afraid of debate with those who disagree, and uninterested in learning or exploration.

Assault Weapons, Defense, and the Resistance to Tyranny

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On some rights—such as the right to life—there is no room for compromise. But assault weapons seem an appropriate point of compromise for proponents of a right to bear arms.

Germain Grisez, Christian Philosopher

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The whole of Grisez’s account of this sense of Christian philosophy repays study, not least as an exploration of the shape that philosophic wonder first takes in a Catholic educated by a warmly believing household; and then of the place of audacious questioning in a Christian faith firmly held for love of God and in hope for God’s Kingdom.
philosophy, natural law

Practical Reason, Basic Goods, and Natural Law

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Reason operating without error judges that no human being should ever intend the death of another human being for any reason whatsoever. No achievable good can justify such a choice. And that is the foundation for the case against the death penalty.

The Philosophical Case against the Philosophical Case against Capital Punishment

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It’s three times more likely that you’ll die of lightning than that Aquinas will turn out to be wrong about something. The same cannot be said of New Natural Law philosophy.

Traditional Catholic Doctrine on Capital Punishment is Irreversible: A Reply to E. Christian Brugger

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E. Christian Brugger is wrong: neither scripture nor tradition could justify a reversal of the Church’s millennia-old teaching on capital punishment

Doubting Thomas (Aquinas) on Private and Public Killing

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There is a genuine tension, not just in Aquinas but in Church teaching more generally, between claims about the intrinsic goodness, sanctity, and inviolability of human life, and claims about political authority to kill. The second in a two-part series.

A Philosophical Case Against Capital Punishment

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Arguments against the death penalty can be made not only on the basis of theology but also on the basis of natural law philosophy. The first in a two-part series.

In Defense of Elizabeth Harman: Taking Pro-Choice Philosophers Seriously

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If we believe that all human beings deserve respect, we ought to act like it. That means we should use our rational faculties to understand and answer bad arguments, not ridicule those who make them.

Our Addiction to Technology: Resistance Must Begin in the Home

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Our enslavement to technology leaves us alienated, depressed, and distracted, first of all by disrupting the cultivation of virtue in the home. Andy Crouch has written a thoughtful and practical guide for families looking to redirect their attention from technology to what really matters.

Harm, Neutrality, or Truth: What Is the Basis of Liberalism?

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Kevin Vallier’s recent book is a rich and rewarding attempt to reconcile people of faith with public reason liberalism.

What Is Legalism?

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Contemporary legalism downplays, ignores, and occasionally denigrates the “rules” of morality in favor of mercy, accompaniment, and integration, because it fails to see that there is an essential and constitutive relationship between morality and human flourishing.

Neil Gorsuch, Natural Law, and the Limits of Judicial Power

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What does natural law say about the power of judges in constitutional systems of government?

Science, Embryonic Autonomy, and the Question of When Life Begins

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A new study demonstrates that human embryos autonomously direct their own development from the very earliest moments of life—even when they are not in their mothers’ wombs.
Public Discourse

Mercy for Dylann Roof

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Showing mercy to Dylann Roof by refusing to impose the death penalty would respect the acts of both his victims, who showed him welcome, and their families, who showed him forgiveness. In this way, good could be drawn from evil, and the sinfulness of Dylann Roof’s actions could be overcome by love.

Joseph Boyle, Public Discourse, and the Kingdom of God

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Joseph Boyle was a colleague, mentor, and friend to many associated with Public Discourse and in the broader academic community. He will be sorely missed.

Couples Who Adopt Are “Real Parents”

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Couples who adopt children out of an abundance of spousal love are creative and life-giving; they help form the identity of their children in a way that mirrors God’s adoption of us through baptism.

To Whom Do Children Belong? Melissa Moschella’s Defense of Parents’ Rights

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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.

Public Discourse: If We Can Keep It

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This Fourth of July, if you believe that the work we do improves the political discourse that is so vital to the preservation of our republic, won’t you make a gift to support the work of Public Discourse?

The Gospel of Happiness

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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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