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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.

IVF Provider Immunity in Alabama: A Challenge to National Conservative Unity on Pro-life Issues

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IVF

IVF Provider Immunity in Alabama: A Challenge to National Conservative Unity on Pro-life Issues

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The new Alabama IVF provider immunity law, recently praised by former President Trump, will have pernicious national consequences on parents’ rights to hold IVF providers accountable and will negatively affect Republican unity over pro-life issues.
Candace Owens

The Conspiracists

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This moment, among other things, may call for something as banal as looking around, embracing and underscoring the figures and images that capture what is enduringly good about normal American life.
neighbor love

The Wax Nose of Neighbor Love 

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Loving one’s neighbor is a moral imperative. How best to do so, however, is more complex than just recklessly citing this principle as immediate justification. All my point amounts to is a plea for caution. 
pope

In the Courts of Three Popes: An Insider’s Insight

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Faithfully living what we claim to believe as Catholic Christians shapes the future. And the fact is, we can no longer afford a sclerotic Church, a comfortable Church, a get-along Church. We need to be a confessing Church, not just in our diocesan structures, but in the pews and family homes of every parish.
Christianity

Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church

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The post-conversion challenges facing Christians arose when they reentered society as baptized people and navigated the conflicts raised by their new convictions. This process demanded a culturally discerning spiritual life.
mother and baby

Artificial Wombs Will Compound the Harm Reproductive Tech Inflicts on Children

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What should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind is the question, “How does all this technological tinkering affect the kids?” We are only beginning to be able to answer that question.
newborn

The Miracle That Saves the World

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Inviting people into joy, both then and now, means also inviting others into possible pain. We must embrace the joys with the sorrows to lead full, rich lives as human beings.
crown of thorns

Friday and the Good Ways of Sorrow 

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It’s a good day for sorrow, a habit sustaining our decency, humanity, patience, and courage for all the other days yet to come. All days bring their challenges, and there is much in our day to bemoan and condemn. Fair enough, but to have the courage and steadfastness needed to continue on, day in and day out, our sorrow serves us well.  
ethics advice column

Ask Chris Tollefsen: An Ethics Advice Column

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The parallel to vital conflict cases is clear: do not too quickly assume that death is inevitable. Do not too quickly assume that active rather than passive harm needs to be inflicted, even as a side effect.
crosses

A Kingship Not of This World

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Few instances in the life of Christianity’s founder exemplify his rejection of the use of force, even against those who break faith, than his treatment of the greatest apostate from Christianity, Judas, whose betrayal Christians remember today
redbud tree

Ordinary Time 

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To admire the world and other people, and especially to appreciate the ordinary things that make up our ordinary existence: this is worthwhile activity.
FemWars

Why Antifeminism Isn’t Enough

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AntiFems face a dilemma. On one hand, they want to affirm, protect, and promote the distinctiveness of women. On the other hand, they oppose what at present seems like the only viable strategy for achieving that end, the recovery and extension of an authentic feminism. 
oath

Disintegrating Conscience in a Fragmented Age 

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Although one might find oneself disagreeing with Smith, as I have on occasion, one will be better for it. And I can say that with a clear conscience.  
pregnancy

What “Abortion Hurts Women” Meant to the Early Feminists

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The early women’s rights advocates sought to challenge, accompany, encourage, and support their sisters in the pursuit of the good life, in choosing good and rejecting evil. They sought to help them understand that they did not have to be the slaves of necessity, but that they could virtuously choose to undertake difficult but worthwhile endeavors, including the hardships of motherhood.
pregnancy and fertility

Problematizing Fertility, Normalizing Disease

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Our bodies cause great inconvenience. Nothing about menstruation, ovulation, or having children is convenient, after all. But it’s the way we were created, and there are better ways to respond to the sexual asymmetry of men and women. What are we losing out on if we suppress it?
newborn baby

Assigned at Birth?

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To assign is to flail and thrash about as we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. But to wait in the ultrasound office or in the delivery room to find out, to then share with others in this first discovery of our child’s identity, to delight equally in male and female, is to recover our fundamental vulnerability to the gifts given to us.
Thomas Aquinas

Courage to Engage the World: Thomism at 750

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Thomas Aquinas had an intellect fully alive. We might not share his title of Doctor of Humanity, but we have the same obligation: to cheerfully explore all, in service of all, for the good of all.
Catholic integralism

All the Kingdoms of the World

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Vallier has done a valuable service by patiently pointing out all the moral and political problems entailed by any attempt to establish integralism. The most important problem with integralism, however, is less in its conception of the state than in its conception of the Church.
intellectual friendship

Intellectual Friendship: Why It Matters

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In an age of atomization, polarization, and powerful new AI technologies, we must recover a vision of intellectual friendship in which we share our lives and loves with each other, contemplate the highest truths together, and cultivate the neglected virtues of humility, generosity, and charity. 
Poland
  • War

Poland, the War in Ukraine, and the Problem of Moral Rearmament

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A major problem is that in these dangerous times, without strength there will be no lasting peace.
Luke Burgis

Q&A: Be Not Conformed—Girard and the Problem of Desire in a Postsecular Age

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It’s useful to heed the words of Gabriel Marcel when it comes to desire. To paraphrase his “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived,” perhaps we could instead say: “Desire is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” Girard himself refers to desire as a “mystery” on numerous occasions. I think he spent his entire life trying to understand that mystery.
IVF

Location, Location, Location

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Location is simply one more of those many factors that make no difference where the most foundational moral principles are concerned. The human embryo is a human being, whether in utero, undergoing cell division in vitro, or temporarily (or permanently) in frozen stasis in a “nursery,” as the Alabama Supreme Court tellingly, but somewhat ironically, calls it.
busy employee

Why Do We Valorize Busyness?

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That is the trap of busyness: believing that the busyness itself is what matters, instead of placing all our work and all our rest at the feet of our maker. That is the trap that the addiction to busyness in our culture lays for us. That is the trap that we ought to resist.
Catholic church interior

Can Catholic Integralism Be Good in Theory but Bad in Practice?

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If you want to boil this essay down into one question for the soft integralist, it is this: You say you don’t want integralism now, but if not now, when? Answering that question is harder than you think.
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