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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.

The “Finest in Disorganized Religion?” Orthodox Christianity Endures

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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.
Advent

Awaiting the Second Advent

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Christmas hope is grounded both in the reality of Christ’s first advent and also in the reality that he will come again to fully establish the peace his princely rule has promised. This is one of the great paradoxes of the faith: Christ has come, and he is coming. The kingdom has arrived, yet we pray “Thy kingdom come.”
Annunciation

The “Magnificat Gift” of Advent

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Offered daily through the liturgical prayer of the Church, the Magnificat invites every Christian, through Jesus, to see the Holy Spirit in the rare expression of the woman from whose flesh our Savior took his own. The Magnificat is Mary in her own words. It inspires study and imitation of the scriptures by presenting Mary as a gift and invitation, a mother of prayer and listening for all.
Washington Monument

Gratitude in an Angry Time

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Those of us who think the stakes in our cultural conflicts are high, whichever side of those conflicts we are on, frequently find ourselves furious. But what are we angry about? Our responses to that question have to do not just with the latest news, but with deeper intuitions about the nature of the human person and its relation to the moral life of our society.

Polygenic Embryo Screening: Following the Logic of IVF

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Even the most extensive attempt to shape “what we will get” will always fail to eliminate the contingency, particularity, and irreducibility of the person, whose concrete individuality will likewise always transcend whatever power we attempt to exercise over it.
Prison

No Porches in Prison: God, Civility, and Redemption

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Civility is an important but secondary virtue. It cannot sustain itself. We can find hope for a healthier culture in a rather surprising place. 
Trump

What Does Another Trump Presidency Mean for the Pro-Life Movement?

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Trump's reelection provides reason for pro-lifers to be cautiously relieved, though still apprehensive.
young adults

Why Do Today’s Emerging Adults Need a Playbook? A Q&A with Anna Moreland

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With respect to love, the loneliness epidemic is real. And that affects not just romantic relationships, but friendships as well. At the end of the day, life is a gift, and the center of life is who you love. That doesn’t start happening when you’re in your mid-thirties. It starts happening now
church

A Surprising Generational Rift in the Christian Reformed Church

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In their denominations and elsewhere in the church, some progressive Baby Boomers have been caught by surprise at younger people not sharing their cultural values. But should they have been surprised at this generational rift in the church? Looking at how different generations have been formed morally, socially, and culturally may help address this question.
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