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Pillar

The Human Person

The first pillar of a decent society is respect for the human person, which recognizes that all individual human beings have dignity simply because of the kind of being they are: animals whose rational faculties allow them to know, love, reason, and communicate. It also recognizes that human beings are persons, members of the human family who flourish in a community that respects their fundamental rights and who long to discover transcendent truths about the nature of reality.

Commemorating—and Choosing Again—the Freedom of Redemption

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Commemorating—and Choosing Again—the Freedom of Redemption

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In these next days we celebrate our deliverance; in so doing we remind ourselves of our meaning, purpose, and dignity. But more: we offer hope for the “multitude” who would return to Egypt, return to slavery, simply because of its luxury and comfort, which seems to them better than the bread of life.

Attending the Person: Twenty Years after John Paul II

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For John Paul II, the category of “person” relates to everything that matters to the human being. His pontificate, to my mind, is best understood as the pontificate of the person.

IVF and the Language of Gift: A Theological Commentary on a Recent Executive Order

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This IVF executive order is anything but pro-life, and it is most certainly not pro-family. It is to be condemned in the strongest terms, and that condemnation must authentically inform Catholic life and family policy and practice. I pray fervently that the process of policy consultation that will soon come as a result of this executive order leave room, at the absolute minimum, for religious and conscience exemptions. But this is the bare minimum.

Christian Bioethics in a Secular World: In Search of Ethical Common Ground

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Beyond a mere set of rules and regulations, a bioethics shaped by Christianity does have something to say to those who suffer—and a person to say it to, One who has suffered alongside us. It is my hope—as it is Cherry’s, I imagine—to see bioethics transformed by the love and mercy made possible by a personal knowledge of Christ. 

A Theology of Health

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While the MAHA critique is correct, there is plenty of room for thinking and engaging about what will replace the impoverished vision of health that got us into this mess. Tyler VanderWeele, and the vision he lays out in A Theology of Health, should be at the center of those conversations. 

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

What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? An Interview with Dr. Abigail Favale on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex

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Feminism is a very fractious world. There’s a lot of different visions of what’s wrong and how we fix it. But all of the modern strands can trace their roots back to The Second Sex.
mother and baby

Making Sense of America’s Maternal Mortality Crisis

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Pro-life state laws both pre- and post-Dobbs prevent the intentional killing of preborn human beings, not essential obstetric care such as the treatment of pregnancy complications before, during, and after childbirth. Any misunderstandings to the contrary on the part of physicians probably stem from rampant misinformation about abortion laws.
Orthodox church

The “Finest in Disorganized Religion?” Orthodox Christianity Endures

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While Orthodoxy’s “multipolar” context arguably can foster temporary frictions, across centuries it has also lent itself to an oddly flexible resilience, not always easily legible to Western perspectives.
Cross ontop of a keyboard

Emerging Tech and Religious Freedom

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As lawmakers across the country increase their scrutiny of emerging technologies, tech-savvy religious organizations will have to navigate an increasingly contested boundary line between the requirements of law and the demands of faith.
angels

On Angels, Demons, and Artificial Intelligence

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In order to understand and evaluate claims about artificial intelligence, we need a satisfying theory of mind that can account both for the intelligent capacities of human beings and those of actual and possible beings that are significantly unlike us. 
Cardinal Newman

John Henry Newman, Ida Görres, and the Power of Hagiography: An Interview with Jennifer Bryson

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The book’s importance goes beyond the perennial value of Newman; Görres penetrates deeply into the heart of Newman’s character and life. In doing so, she reveals what made him holy, and holiness is of perennial value.
smartphone addiction

Should We Decouple Technology from Everyday Life?

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For decades, we have been told that the future is digital and that resistance is futile. But what if the future we truly want is one where the analogue coexists alongside the digital, where digital technology is an option and not a mandate?
Aquinas

Nein: On Barthian Ethics

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Whenever evangelical ethics relies on a Barthian or quasi-Barthian insistence on doing Christian ethics, I suggest we robustly answer, “nein.” Just a simple, “no.”
transgender symbol

It’s Time for American Elites to Rediscover Human Nature: Lessons from United States v. Skrmetti

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SB1 treats all minors equally, in accordance with their sex, and it discriminates against all medical interventions that reject a minor’s sex. To arrive at that conclusion, we must recognize what constitutes natural human development for boys and girls, and accept the underlying premise that human nature exists and demands respect.
United Healthcare

Luigi Mangione’s Apologists Are Undermining the Pursuit of Social Justice

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What will bring about lasting reform in healthcare is not violent political protest but a revolution at the heart of healthcare whereby we rediscover its connection to the common good.
Jordan Peterson

We Who Wrestle with God: On the Border of Things

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Peterson leads us to the door of the Church, but we must take the step our guide is unwilling to take and enter inside. We pray for Peterson to join us, not because we need an ally—the Truth will fend for itself—but because we hope he can embrace the “ridiculously good” gift of grace, cross the border, and become a brother united in Christ.
surrogacy

Behind the New Italian Ban on Surrogacy

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Should children gestated and born in violation of Italian laws be taken from these putative “parents?” Or should Italian sovereignty capitulate, accepting that whatever adults want, and pay for (even other lives), becomes a right? 
editor/writer desk

The Best of Public Discourse: 2024

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Enjoy a review of our editors’ favorite essays from the year. 

Surprised by Christ

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The small surprises and sacrifices of Christmas—the time, resources, and care our loved ones expend in order to place under glowing trees those bright bundles upon which our own names are written—recall the marvel of Christ’s entry into the world in order to sacrifice himself for those he calls by name. This is the unexpected gift that we ought to be surprised by, over and over, every Christmas—indeed, every morning.
drug use

The False Promises of Drugs: Joseph Ratzinger on True Human Excellence

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The problem with drug use is not just its grave danger to our bodily and psychological well-being, nor that it constitutes a radical assertion of self-will, but that it is a flight from the adventure of the moral life
Pregnancy ultrasound

Embryo Screening and the New Eugenics

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Genetic screening of embryos allows prospective parents to select embryos for IVF based on the absence of disease and disability as well as the possession of desirable traits. Human life, however, ought to be received graciously rather than rejected or accepted based on our preferences or risk appetite.
Israel

Kafka and Counterterrorism

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While the enemies of the Jews are impenetrable to reason, the murderous among them can be defanged, and their useful idiots isolated as cranks and bigots. A policy that does so successfully is indispensable for the surest guarantor of Jewish life since the Lord Himself fought the battles of Ancient Israel.
death, mortality, cemetary

Houellebecq at the End

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The sadness of Michel Houellebecq lies in the accuracy of his diagnosis and the failure of his prescription. He sees that death is the last enemy, but not that it might be destroyed.
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