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Pillar

Education & Culture

The fourth pillar, education and culture, is built upon the recognition of two essential realities. First, the Western intellectual tradition requires a dedication to and desire for truth. Second, education takes place not only within colleges and universities but within our broader culture, whose institutions and practices form us as whole persons.

The Paganism of Hasan Piker 

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Beyond Expressive Conduct: The Heterosexual Significance of the Wedding Cake

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The wedding cake is an essential element of a ritual system that expresses the public establishment of a marriage. Its form and ritual use signify the procreative sexual relationship, with its expectation of fertility in the body of the bride, which is being publicly legitimated by the wedding.

What’s Wrong with Rod Dreher’s Straussian Narrative of the American Constitution

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Because he accepts a Straussian framework that sees modernity rather than Christianity as the major turning point of Western history, Rod Dreher underestimates the influence of Christian and classical thought on the American founding.

Resisting the Fortress of Solitude: What’s Wrong with First Things’ Anxious Anti-Capitalism

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Young people today, especially the ones who are serious about religion and look to the editors of First Things for guidance, must resist the allure of an intellectual Fortress of Solitude where they can sit and feel superior to everyone. Griping about the state of society is a waste of time. Part two of two.

Notes from Reality About Economic Regulation: What’s Wrong with First Things’ Anxious Anti-Capitalism

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R.R. Reno’s manifesto on capitalism—in which he concludes, among other things, that expanding economic freedom leads to transgenderism—is based on empirically false claims. Part one of a two-part series.

Will the Trump Administration Push Back Against Transgender Ideology in Schools?

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Until policy-makers and the public realize the factual and moral bankruptcy of transgender ideology, pressure will continue to mount to normalize the tragically abnormal.

Leo Strauss and the Pursuit of Knowledge: A Reply to Paul DeHart

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Leo Strauss’s statements on philosophy do not deny that knowledge is possible. Rather, they emphasize that philosophy—while motivated by awareness of one’s own ignorance—is a way of life teleologically ordered toward knowledge.

Minority Stress Is Real, but Wedding Cakes Don’t Cause It

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New research points to “internalized homophobia” as the problem, not external discrimination.

Consent is Not Enough: Harvey Weinstein, Sex, and Human Flourishing

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What Harvey Weinstein is accused of is wrong not only because the victims did not consent but also and more importantly because of what he chose. Sex expresses self-gift, which is why it is such a violation when something that should only be a free gift is stolen by force.

Capital Punishment, Catholicism, and Natural Law: A Reply to Christopher Tollefsen

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Aquinas taught the principle that a punishment ought to be proportionate to the offense, where death is a proportionate punishment for the gravest crimes.

St. John Paul II Did Not Change Catholic Teaching on Capital Punishment: A Reply to E. Christian Brugger

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If E. Christian Brugger is right, then the Church has been teaching grave moral error and badly misunderstanding scripture for two millennia. Nothing less than her very credibility is at stake.

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

Porn Is the Missing Piece in the Louis C.K. Story

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Pornography rewires its viewers’ brains, distorting the way they interpret the behavior of those around them and making them believe that unacceptable behavior will be welcomed.

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.

The Fault Lies in Ourselves: Coriolanus at the Royal Shakespeare Company

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Seeing Director Angus Jackson’s Coriolanus should be uncomfortable for anyone who loves republican government, regardless of political leaning.

Michael Novak: A Model for Social Scientists

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The “real human person” was the persistent subject of Michael Novak’s life’s work. Novak wanted real, gritty, ordinary persons, in ordinary life, and he wanted a political and economic order for those real, gritty, ordinary persons.

Embryology and Science Denial

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The HHS has recently—and rightly—described life as beginning at conception. Dr. Richard Paulson’s denial of this claim contradicts the standard scientific position, and his arguments against that claim are fallacious and inaccurate.

Contra Leo Strauss, There’s No Conflict Between Reason and Revelation

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Strauss’s account of reason and revelation seems to depend for its intelligibility on an account of knowledge—upon an epistemic method and a noetic structure—itself ultimately unintelligible.

Radical Autonomy: A Dangerous Metaphysical Myth

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As a bioethical principle, respect for autonomy asks far too little of our minds and hearts. When the moral stakes are highest, we degrade patients by treating them as though they were simply bundles of self-interest.

Catholic Tradition, St. John Paul II, and the Death Penalty

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Four conditions must be met for a teaching of the Catholic Church to be considered infallible. Acceptance of the death penalty meets none of them. St. John Paul II laid down theoretical markers that provide a clear basis for a Catholic teaching rejecting the death penalty in principle. Part two of a two-part essay.

Capital Punishment Is Intrinsically Wrong: A Reply to Feser and Bessette

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Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette’s new book asserts that Catholics cannot legitimately reject the death penalty as wrong always and everywhere. They are wrong. Part one of a two-part essay.

Not Hobbesian but Christian: Why Patrick Deneen’s Misinterpretation of the American Founding Matters

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Nothing has so limited the scope of politics as has Christianity by placing man’s end in the transcendent. The Founders did not think that the summum bonum could be reached through political means, not because they were Hobbesian but because they were Christian. The second in a two-part series.

Fools or Scoundrels? A Response to Patrick Deneen

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To suppose that the Founders set up a republic to vitiate the virtue on which its existence depended requires the belief that they were either stupid (by creating a Hobbesian regime and not noticing) or immoral (by doing it while cleverly lying about what they were doing). The first in a two-part series.

An Absurd Fate: What Happens to Abandoned Embryos?

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A recent embryo custody battle highlights the plight of the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos in the United States today.

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