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Search Results for: beauty – Page 6

A Reading from Homer painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The Princess and the Stranger

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Stories of encounters between strangers and princesses were common in ancient cultures. The two most famous, about Moses and Odysseus, seem to present a choice between passivity and activity, peace and violence. But the question becomes both more complicated and more interesting when we turn to the princess-and-stranger narrative to end all others.
Elderly woman

To Die Well: Learning The Lost Art of Dying

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No magic pill or incantation solves the mystery of death, but a new handbook shows mortals how to use medical resources and cultural practices to die better. It emphasizes our interdependence, cautioning readers to avoid therapeutic obstinacy, to recognize the moral dimensions of dying, to grieve, and—in so doing—to grow.
Baby with needle

Moral Repugnance, Abortion, and COVID Vaccines: A Dialogue

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The following began as an email exchange, initiated by Richard Stith’s message to the authors of recent Public Discourse articles—particularly this statement by Catholic scholars—arguing for the moral permissibility of receiving the COVID vaccines. Melissa Moschella responded to the message, and an insightful dialogue ensued, which we believe would be of interest to many readers. Here is a revised version of the exchange.
Happy family playing outside

Work, Sex, and Babies

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Marriage is not always easy, and children can be exhausting. Yet it turns out that human happiness is found only in the gift of self. Work can be a generous gift of oneself, of course, but for many the flight from marriage and children into workism results not in the finding of self but in its loss.
Statue

The Importance of the Virtues When Men Have Lost Their Reason

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Since acting rightly requires a well-formed intellect coupled with rightly ordered desires, moral formation is as much about training the passions as it is about making arguments.
Statue of St. Francis

Enduring Longings: Reflections on DuBois’s Reflections on Francis of Assisi

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The conception of the good life that W.E.B. DuBois discerns in the pattern of St. Francis of Assisi’s life straddles the secular and sacred. It can provide a starting point for a recovery and re-articulation of enduring longings in a secularized culture. The cultivation of those longings, in turn, is at the core of truly liberal education.
Mont saint michel

Benedictine Education and the Importance of Poetic Thinking

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The poetic stance is receptive, submissive even, and begins with an appreciation of the mysterious and the inscrutable. A humble appreciation of the mysterious beauty of reality must be the context for all fruitful problem-solving.
Twin babies

We Are Real Parents, Too: Our Adoption Story

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Some people don’t consider adoptive parents to be the “real” parents. While it is undeniable that biological parents give their children their genetic composition, the parents who raise them leave an enormous mark on children’s character and spiritual makeup. Over many years, adoptive parents influence their children’s education, the habits they develop, the affections they form, and their beliefs and values. In this way, adoptive parents become indispensable to the identity of the child.
Hiker

Facing Tomorrow’s Biggest Challenges

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The authors and editors at PD don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but we think we know something about which questions we need to raise, and who we should ask to address them. As more and more about America and conservatism seem up for debate, expect PD to continue to provide a path forward.
Austrian Village

Revelations from a Hidden Life

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The hidden life of Franz Jägerstätter offers us an example of how to love our fellow citizens in a time of partisan antagonism and division.

A Communion of Anxiety: Hookup Culture and the Impossible Horizon of the Future

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What if religious and conservative higher education ceased speaking about marriage and family life as an accomplishment and began to treat marriage and children as that which enable human flourishing and a meaningful future?
Parent and baby fist

Baby Is a Punk Rocker: On the Givenness of Life

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Excessive efforts to control the givenness of our children’s lives reveal our doubt that life is a good gift in itself. They also show a vision of human flourishing that is dependent upon material prosperity, personal achievements, and social status.
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.
Advent candles

2020: A Year for Quiet Hope

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During this difficult year, Public Discourse authors have called us to hold on to hope, even when those around us succumb to despair.
Girl reading

The Liberating Power of the Liberal Arts

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An education in the liberal arts is one that teaches students to love what is true, good, and beautiful. It frees the soul and makes those who have received it want to pass that freedom on to others.
Doctor reading to child

Faustian Medicine: Uncovering the Humanistic Soul of Medical Education

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Medicine isn’t opposed to what makes us human. At its best, it’s a practical application of the ideals of humanistic education, and its goal is to express and enable those things that distinguish us as human beings. Those practicing medicine need encouragement to cultivate a true understanding of health and healthcare.
Heart Hands

How St. Katharine Drexel and My Odd-Couple Parents Taught Me to Fight Racism

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What I learned from St. Katharine Drexel was that the first act is simply to see the truth. To really use our eyes and intellect and heart to see another as a fellow human, given dignity by God, is no simple act—but it can be done. And then to step toward those who are not being accorded this dignity and to offer it to them, to reach out the hand of charity, takes a monumental act, a decision often of serious self-sacrifice.

Erika Bachiochi on the Future of Pro-Life Feminism

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The question that divides us is how we ought to respond to reproductive asymmetry: the reality that women carry disproportionate burdens due to our special role in human reproduction. What makes one a feminist is the view that this basic inequality at the heart of reproduction is one that deserves, in justice, an affirmative cultural response. We wish not only for maternity to be celebrated for the true privilege it most certainly is, but also for women to be encouraged and supported in other contributions they make. This requires that the burdens of childbearing ought to be shared not only within the family, but also across the wider society too.
Praying hands

The Primacy of the Spiritual and the Obligations of the Church: On the Suspension of Public Worship

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When we deliberate about how the Church, the state, various institutions, and all individuals should navigate the crisis of COVID-19, we are in fact deliberating about what ultimate common good we collectively belong to. Yes, we are called to protect our own bodily life and the lives of others, but we are also inclined by nature to participate in communities of friendship, extended family life, truth-seeking, meaningful work, gainful employment, liturgy, and contemplation.
Hooded Man Taking Selfie

Public Discourse in the “Age of Selfies”

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Adam MacLeod’s new book, “The Age of Selfies,” represents a worthy contribution to the intellectual retracing of our steps that we must pursue if we hope to restore reason and civility to our public discourse. Our freedom and social tranquility depend on a renewed seriousness about natural law and objective moral truth.
Protest

Racism Is Real. But Is “Systemic Racism”? That Time I Was Published by Newsweek—For Two Hours

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The opinion editor of Newsweek should be commended for striving to publish a diversity of views at the site, but its editor-in-chief committed journalistic malpractice by taking down an essay already published in order to reschedule it when it could be “balanced” by a view less challenging to the site’s readers.
Polyamorous Family

Poly Parenting and the Value of the Family

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The emerging discussion about in vitro gametogenesis and other types of multi-parent technologies demands renewed attention to why children do well with only two parents, and why those parents do best to procreate in the ordinary way, even with all its inefficiencies, burdens, and failures.
Strange Rites

Angels, Demons, and Unbundled Religion

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True encounters with demonic activity ought to make today’s neopagans reconsider whether they should do more than cultivate eclectic spiritual identities.
Homer

Homer at the Beach

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On Calypso’s island, we encounter both the allure and the dangers of the beach. There, Homer brings us right up against a mysterious fact: the fantasy of an undying beach body—even that of a love goddess whose collagen never loses its tensile strength—will not really make us happy. The best kind of lover will have skin in the game: skin that can age, that has aged, that is actively aging before our eyes. To escape the history that is written into our bodies is to escape the meaning, the meaningful struggle, of our lives.
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