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Search Results for: cyclical – Page 5

Pilgrims in Our Own Country: The Christian Confession and the Christian Conundrum

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National politics has its place, but the more important and urgent task for Christians is the construction and maintenance of actual communities in which the personal and social implications of the Christian Confession can be realized.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch: A Natural Law Originalist

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We might call Neil Gorsuch a natural law originalist: a jurist who believes that the content, motivation, form, and impact of the Constitution that he’s called upon to uphold and of the laws he must fairly interpret are—for the most part—sound expressions of the account of human good and human dignity to which he subscribes.

On Islam Fails to Enlighten

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Fr. James Schall’s recently published collection of essays on Islam and violence suffers from reductionist arguments, non-existent evidence, and historical ignorance. It is a book that defeats itself, and is an unfortunate addition to the legacy of an otherwise great scholar.

Intentional Killing Is Always Wrong: The Development Initiated by Pius XII, Made by John Paul II, and Repeated by Francis

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The Catholic Catechism’s new section on capital punishment makes no substantive change of teaching. Nor did the 1997 amendment of that section. The 1992 Catechism did change traditional teaching on killing, whether in war, police actions or judicial executions. That authoritative change, partly initiated by Pius XII, has sufficient theological warrants, but it is little understood and needs much more attention. Its logical conclusion is that capital punishment is inherently wrong. But that has not yet been taught. Part one of a two-part essay.

Social Ecology and the Market Economy: Revisiting the Threefold Foundations of a Flourishing Society

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A full vision of the social structures of human flourishing must include three elements: the economic, political, and moral-cultural.

In Defence of Catholic Integralism

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States that do not recognize both natural law and the transformation of law and public reason brought about by the raising of religion to a supernatural good will become confessors of false belief opposed to Christianity, and their great power will turn from supporting Christianity to opposing or even repressing it, especially in relation to its moral teaching.

Love, Economics, and Cheap Sex

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According to sociologist Mark Regnerus, the birth control pill and the rise of internet porn decreased the cost of sexual access so substantially as to affect a fundamental shift from a world in which sex served higher goods to a world in which sex is the higher good.

Development, Capital Punishment, and Dignitatis Humanae

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Despite the vast amount of ink spilled in the current controversy over capital punishment, there’s been a real hesitancy to make explicit its analogy with the longer-running and arguably more important debate respecting the Church’s teaching on religious liberty.

Three Questions for the New Antiliberals

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The new antiliberals are not wrong to worry about the dire state of American politics and culture. But they persistently fail to adequately ask, much less clearly answer, three pressing questions that must be part of any adequate treatment of the problem, and they virtually ignore the thoughtful conservative alternatives to antiliberalism that do address these questions.

Integralism and Catholic Doctrine

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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.

Jordan Peterson on Cain and Abel

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Spurred by social comparison, Cain and Abel represent rival responses to the suffering inherent in the human condition following the rise of self-consciousness. Abel’s suffering leads to his self-development as a warrior. Cain’s suffering leads to envy, malevolence, and murder. This essay explicates and develops Peterson’s interpretation of the story.

The Catholic Church, the State, and Liberalism

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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.

Madeline L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, and Christianity: Moving Beyond Collectivism and Individualism

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The Christian quest for the common good is not reducible either to the simple aggregate of individual goods or to the promotion of the needs of the collective at the expense of the one.

Orestes Brownson, Being Catholic, and Being American

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The writings of Orestes Brownson can help contemporary Catholics make sense of the American Founding.

Capital Punishment, Catholicism, and Natural Law: A Reply to Christopher Tollefsen

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Aquinas taught the principle that a punishment ought to be proportionate to the offense, where death is a proportionate punishment for the gravest crimes.

A Philosophical Case Against Capital Punishment

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Arguments against the death penalty can be made not only on the basis of theology but also on the basis of natural law philosophy. The first in a two-part series.

Catholic Tradition, St. John Paul II, and the Death Penalty

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Four conditions must be met for a teaching of the Catholic Church to be considered infallible. Acceptance of the death penalty meets none of them. St. John Paul II laid down theoretical markers that provide a clear basis for a Catholic teaching rejecting the death penalty in principle. Part two of a two-part essay.

Capital Punishment Is Intrinsically Wrong: A Reply to Feser and Bessette

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Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette’s new book asserts that Catholics cannot legitimately reject the death penalty as wrong always and everywhere. They are wrong. Part one of a two-part essay.

An Absurd Fate: What Happens to Abandoned Embryos?

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A recent embryo custody battle highlights the plight of the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos in the United States today.

What Tocqueville Prescribes for Our Crazy American Souls

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A new book by James Poulos reveals both the greatness and the limitations of Tocqueville.

Separating the Inseparable: Technology’s Sexual Nihilism

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The sad irony of contraception’s desire to cling to sex without its procreative consequences is that in its separating of the unitive from the procreative, both union and procreation have been removed from sex itself, rendering the act empty and meaningless.

Pittsburgh, Not Paris: Explaining the Climate Hysteria

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When President Trump announced his exit from the Paris Climate Accord, the usual suspects responded with their usual agitation and doomsaying. How can so many people subscribe to an idea—and so vehemently—that rests on so little?

Kuyper and Pope Leo as Christian Thinkers

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A new book highlights the shared anthropology and social thought of Abraham Kuyper and Pope Leo XIII without glossing over their differences.

Religious Liberty and the Common Good

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To detach religious liberty from truth is to decapitate it.
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