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Although many Jews have been misled into thinking otherwise, Judaism is not compatible with political support for abortion.
Catholics today are not required to believe in a Catholic confessional state. If anything, they are required to believe that everyone has a right under the natural law to religious freedom, that the state has no authority in religious matters, and that coercion of religious activity by the state is morally wrong. In short, integralism is contrary to Catholic doctrine.
The progressive left is working to overcome what it perceives as the out-of-date premises of the Judeo-Christian ethic previously reflected in scouting.
Rumors of God’s death may have been greatly exaggerated, but the prevalence of a materialistic philosophy that cannot give an adequate account of human freedom and moral responsibility has put in jeopardy many of the core ideas at the base of our civilization. Without metaphysics we are left simply with physics, and physics is about power, leverage, and force.
We can’t undo the past, but we can avoid repeating its mistakes. Here’s how.
The title of Yuval Noah Harari’s book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, is misleading. While the book uses a future-oriented rhetoric, it is actually less about the future than it is about what the author takes to be the nature of life itself: namely, that we are all just bundles of algorithms.
As the late Justice Scalia was fond of pointing out, the views of individual lawmakers in the midst of debate are not themselves the law we must interpret. Neither are the votes taken in a deliberative body rightly viewed as votes on anyone’s interpretation of the text under discussion. The text that they passed, not what they said about what they passed, is the law.
The process of sanctification in this life is not necessarily about eradicating fallen desires. Rather, we form Christian character when, relying on God’s grace, we refuse to consent to temptations to sin, either in thought or in deed.
The pardon power is the most significant and strongest power of the president, and the Constitution places almost no limits on it. In using it, the president can unilaterally nullify the legitimate authority of the legislative and judicial branches.
The Hippocratic Oath offers physicians of any generation guidelines, proscriptions, and prescriptions about how to be a good physician. We may not agree with all of its conclusions, but if we unthinkingly dismiss them, we do so at our own peril.
The last great sexual sin of our time is not related to any specific sex act or forbidden partner. The greatest sexual sin of our time is not a sin of commission but of omission: the sin of not doing it at all.
Patrick Deneen poses good questions but begs others. The second installment in the Public Discourse symposium on Why Liberalism Failed.
Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is a provocative attempt to explain what’s wrong with our culture, how this came to be, and what might be done about it. Although his historical account of liberalism is unpersuasive, he offers a prescient analysis of the current moment and insightful prescriptions for constructive action.
What can keep today’s young evangelical searchers in the fold? Only the recognition that their own questing puts them squarely in the lineage of martyrs, mystics, monastics, and the whole “cloud of witnesses.”
It’s time for Christians to partner with conservative Muslims and others who share traditional views on key social issues. And American Muslims should leave behind their lockstep alliance with the social justice left.
According to previous papal teaching, a Catholic confessional state is the ideal, even if in most modern situations it’s not a practical possibility, and prudence would steer us away from it. That teaching continues to be normative for Catholics.
It was Christianity, not modernity, that separated church and state. It was modernity, not Christianity, that sought to bind them back together. And, at day’s end, the American order has more in keeping with the Christian apostasy than with either antiquity’s sacral political orders or modernity’s rejection of the claim that there exists any domain outside the jurisdiction of the modern state.
Because liberal Western democracies are ostensibly rooted in the theory of popular sovereignty, elite disdain for the people creates another legitimation crisis—one that many fail to recognize. It is not simply that the people have lost confidence in the elites and their governance, or that the elites struggle to speak for (and even to) the people. Disdain for the people also unmoors elite authority.
Contemporary America faces continued racial discord that throws into question our mutual seriousness about the natural rights tradition and our commitment to the demands of republican citizenship. In an effort at self-scrutiny, conservatives should ask ourselves what our first response is in the face of evidence of institutional racism, and then ask ourselves what it should be.
Women are deeply effective in the transmission of mores, as are the churches, schools, and civic organizations that they serve and lead. If these institutions were touched by white supremacy even into the 1970s, how can those educated by such institutions escape the influence of these opinions in their own interpretations of contemporary racial politics?
Same-sex parenting advocates are calling on states’ rights to define the legal relationship between parent and child. What they seek is the power to write the record of a child’s origins and to determine a fundamental aspect of a child’s identity.
Aside from the importance of fighting ideological neocolonialism, building up the pro-life movement in Africa is essential given how politically and economically influential Africa is likely to become over the next century. Obianuju Ekeocha is doing this admirably and effectively on a shoestring budget.
When it comes to the Catholic Church, there’s a quiet sense that the Vatican thinks in centuries, that a thirty-year crisis will hardly matter in time. Perhaps this time is different. But we don’t know, and Ross Douthat is honest enough to leave us hanging, waiting for the next installment of the Church’s story to be told.
In his biblical interpretation, Jordan Peterson re-presents in powerful and fresh ways the stories that have animated Western culture. Christians have much to learn from him, even as his own engagement with the Bible could be enriched by the Christian tradition.