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Pillar

Politics & Law

The third pillar of a decent society is a just system of politics and law. Such a government does not bind all persons, families, institutions of civil society, and actors in the marketplace to itself as subservient features of an all-pervading authority. Instead, it honors and protects the inherent equal dignity of all persons, safeguards the family as the primary school of virtue, and seeks justice through the rule of law.

Congress Shall Make No Law Abridging the Freedom of … Pornhub? 

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Public Discourse

Yes, Tyranny is a Fitting Word

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Why should a federal judge expect citizens, lawyers, and officials to obey her orders when she ignores the cases before her, and when she holds facts, law, and reason in such obvious contempt?
Public Discourse

Judicial Tyranny UnMoored

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Judge Callie Granade ignored the case in front of her, then decided a hypothetical case involving facts that she made up, many of which directly contradicted the undisputed facts in the actual case before her.
Public Discourse

The ACLU’s Betrayal of Civil Liberties

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The ACLU is trying to deprive other organizations of freedoms that it would insist upon for itself. Their work is not a defense of equality—it is an effort to impose a certain view of morality on the country by law.
Public Discourse

Preach from the Rooftops: Evangelium Vitae at Twenty

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We cannot address the unraveling of our culture without addressing the consequences of contraception and abortion. We must rightly understand the relationships between love, truth, freedom, and justice.
Public Discourse

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Are Not Like Race: Why ENDA is Bad Policy

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Sexual orientation and gender identity are conceptually different from race, and beliefs about marriage as the union of man and woman are conceptually and historically different from opposition to interracial marriage. Adapted from testimony delivered on Monday March 16 before the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
Public Discourse

Federal Court Precedent: A Defense of Judge Roy Moore and the Alabama Supreme Court

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The US Supreme Court has set a precedent upholding the right of states to define marriage as the union of husband and wife. All federal and state judges—including those in Alabama—are bound by that precedent.
Public Discourse

“A Rather Antinomian Christianity”: John Updike’s Religion

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John Updike believed in a strange sort of Christianity that rejected the strictures of traditional faith, choosing divine comfort while rejecting divine commands. In other words, it was gospel without law, grace without repentance, the love of God without the holiness of God.
Public Discourse

God, Reason, and Our Civilizational Crisis

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The way that a culture understands the nature of God shapes its conception of man, reason, and society. Though this presents enormous challenges for the Islamic world, it also has significant implications for the sustainability of Western civilization.
Public Discourse

The Rich Roots and Spoiled Fruits of Liberal Toleration

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After decades of efforts to be emancipated from religious influences, the toleration of political liberals is still only an impoverished relative of its classical cousin.
Public Discourse

The Shopkeeper’s Dilemma and Cooperation with Evil

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A shopkeeper who objects to sex-same weddings but who nevertheless provides services at such weddings generally acts in a morally permissible way if he acts to comply with a validly-enacted law, to preserve the goodwill of his business, and to make a just profit. Nevertheless, a law that in this way coerces a shopkeeper to cooperate with actions he reasonably believes immoral is gravely unjust.
Public Discourse

Lincoln’s Best Speech: A Sesquicentennial

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Lincoln’s second inaugural address, 150 years old today, is as pertinent as ever. It reminds us that we must resist the poisonous temptation to see those with whom we disagree as bitter enemies even as we vigorously defend the moral truths that ought to guide our public life.
Public Discourse

Canada’s Supreme Court Creates Right to Assisted Suicide, Leaves Details Up to Parliament

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Most Americans are probably not aware that the push to create a right to assisted suicide is an international effort. The Canadian Supreme Court has just ruled that parliament must enact laws allowing assisted suicide.
Public Discourse

President Obama’s Dishonest and Unconstitutional De-Authorization

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President Obama’s “authorization” request is designed to curtail existing legal authority to wage war on ISIL and to handcuff future presidents in the exercise of their constitutional authority as commander in chief.
Public Discourse

Three-Parent Embryos: Harming Women to Save Lives

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The UK has passed a bill that allows for genetic engineering of children through nuclear transfer technology and germ-line modification. Young women will be needed to supply their eggs. But egg donation—or more accurately, egg selling—is risky business.
Public Discourse

The Implications of Extending Marriage Benefits to Same-Sex Couples

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It is morally indefensible for Catholic institutions to recognize and incentivize same-sex marriages by extending marriage benefits to employees who declare themselves legally married to a person of the same sex.
Public Discourse

Abraham Lincoln and Same-Sex Marriage

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The structure and logic of the legal arguments made for nationwide judicial imposition of same-sex marriage are remarkably similar to the arguments made by those who argued for the judicial imposition of slavery nationwide. Will the Republican Party produce another Lincoln to stand against them?
Public Discourse

God, America, and Rights: How Chris Cuomo Gets Rights Wrong

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CNN anchor Chris Cuomo recently argued that rights are a simply matter of “collective agreement and compromise.” His remarks are evidence of a desire on the part of America’s intellectual and cultural elite to divorce America from its traditional political identity and from the notion that politics has any connection to God.
Public Discourse

The Death of The Rule of Law in Alabama

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The constitutional crisis now unfolding in Alabama is a direct and foreseeable result of Judge Callie S. Granade’s orders.
Public Discourse

Abraham Lincoln as Plutarch Might Have Seen Him

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Thanks to its sympathy and its moral seriousness, Richard Brookhiser’s new biography of Abraham Lincoln is a fine study of statesmanship.
Public Discourse

Constitutional Conservatism Rejects Judicial Supremacy

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Conservatives should defend the Constitution and the rule of law, but they should not defend judicial supremacy. The Constitution—not the Supreme Court—is our country’s highest authority.
Public Discourse

Is Christian Teaching on Sexuality Psychologically Harmful?

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For parents with LGBT children, Christianity offers an alternative to false dilemmas of affirmation or abandonment.
Public Discourse

Eight Hundred Years of Prayer: Lawyers, Faith, and the Common Good

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It isn’t too late for America’s noble experiment to succeed. But that depends on the courage and commitment of American people of faith. Adapted from a homily delivered on January 15, 2015, at the Red Mass of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.
Public Discourse

Challenging Unjust Laws Takes Prudence, Courage, and Common Sense

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In the real world, human goods are often in conflict with one another. This reality forces us to make difficult choices and trade-offs that cannot be eliminated or adjudicated by following simple rules.
Public Discourse

Resist or Accommodate Evil: There is No “Third Way”

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When conscience flirts with the idea of accommodating an unjust law, it must politely, yet firmly, reject the sirens of seduction.

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