Speaking at Notre Dame’s commencement ceremonies yesterday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan told graduates that Mary is “not just our patroness, but our model.” He explained:

She gave God’s son a human nature; she gave the Eternal Word—God the Son, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity—flesh. . . .

Now, as you complete [your] years at this acclaimed university dedicated to her, you are asked the same pivotal question the Archangel Gabriel once posed to her: will you let God take flesh in you? Will you give God a human nature? Will He be reborn in you? . . .

Here at Notre Dame we do not strive to be like Harvard or Oxford, but like Bethlehem, Nazareth, Cana, Calvary, and the Upper Room at Pentecost . . . with Mary, as the “Word becomes flesh” in the one who called Himself “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The full text of his address is available here (PDF).

Ruth Graham flags a funny problem in the essay that Matthew Cantirino shared yesterday: Originality has never been more valued in wedding ceremonies, and never harder to produce.

She and her fiance, “like just about every other betrothed couple in America . . . wanted our wedding to be ‘personal.’” But “the aesthetics of such a wedding . . . are practically set in stone: indie pop music, mason jars, white Christmas lights, wildflowers. And poetry.”

By the time of her wedding, she came to realize that there is no such thing as an entirely original wedding ceremony: “marriage means stepping into an ancient institution marked by hundreds of temporal particulars,” so your wedding’s dearth of originality is no shortcoming.

One blessing of getting married in the Catholic Church is this unoriginality. Besides sparing the bride and groom the burden of originality—writing their own vows, playing good but not overused music, finding meaningful yet not excessively obscure readings—the Catholic rite of marriage reminds the couple of a truth easily forgotten: Your wedding (like your marriage) is not only about you.

That the Rite of Marriage takes place the middle of the nuptial Mass, embedded between Scripture readings and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, is no mistake. It situates the marriage in what is, for Catholics, its broader context: its divine origin and graces, its connection to the community, its symbolism of the covenant between God and man.

But perhaps the most counter-cultural aspect of the ceremony (since, after all, most couples find some divine or transcendental meaning in marriage) is its mention of children. During the vows, couples are asked: “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?” In saying yes, the bride and groom agree together to found a new Ecclesia domestica, the domestic Church that is the family. But even that new family is not a unit unto itself; it is part of a whole community, as the community’s presence at the wedding attests.

The nuptial Mass, then, is suffused with meaning, which deepens over time as the couple matures in their marriage, settles in a community, and (God-willing) has children. Personal weddings can be nice, but I’ll take this unoriginality any day.

While Nagel rejects “psychophysical reductionism,” and believes mind to be as fundamental as matter, he rejects any form of mind-matter dualism. “Outright dualism,” he says, “would abandon the hope for an integrated explanation . . . and would imply that biology has no responsibility at all for the existence of minds.”

Instead, matter and mind must be seen as parts of “a single natural order that unifies everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles.” In his view, the evidence “favors some form of neutral monism”—the idea that there is really just one basic stuff in nature, which has both physical and mental aspects.

Nagel may be right to reject dualism, but his reasons for doing so seem weak to me.

The article is only available to non-subscribers for three days.

The jury has found Kermit Gosnell guilty on three charges of first-degree murder of babies, according to reporter J. D. Mullane, and not guilty of a fourth murder charge. (Details on those murder charges here.) Judge Jeffrey Minehart had earlier dismissed three other first-degree murder charges against Gosnell.

Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of patient Karnamaya Mongar and convicted of numerous lesser charges, including multiple counts of violating Pennsylvania’s informed consent law and twenty-one counts of abortion of unborn babies over twenty-four weeks gestation.

The verdict follows ten days of deliberations and roughly six weeks of courtroom testimony about the more than two hundred criminal charges against him.

According to background information from LifeNews, Gosnell could face the death penalty, which prosecutors are pursuing when a second jury is impaneled “to determine sentencing under the penalty phase of the trial.” Update: reports vary about whether the same jury will reconvene to decide the sentence or whether a new jury will be impaneled. Either way, the sentencing phase will begin next Tuesday, May 21.

At minimum, according to Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, Gosnell will receive three life sentences to jail. Robert George last month urged pro-lifers to request that Gosnell’s life be spared in the event of his conviction.

The courtroom today was packed, according to journalist Steve Volk, in contrast to the earlier stages of the trial when few media outlets sent reporters. Volk added that Gosnell heard the verdict passively, while one prosecutor reportedly sobbed.

Gosnell’s defense attorney, according to CNN, claimed in his closing argument that “none of the infants was killed; rather . . . they were already dead as a result of Gosnell administering the drug Digoxin, which can cause abortion.”

Co-defendant Eileen O’Neill, who worked with Gosnell, was found guilty of conspiracy and theft by deception but not guilty of five other charges. Prosecutors said she “deceived patients and insurance companies by pretending to be a licensed physician and billing for those services.”

NBC reports that the twelve jury members, seven women and five men, all “said they were either pro-choice or had no opinion” about abortion. Following the verdict, J. D. Mullane reports, Gosnell attorney Jack McMahon asked that all jurors be polled; each affirmed the verdict “in [a] strong voice.”

While the prosecution had more than fifty witnesses testify, Gosnell himself never took the stand during the arguments, and McMahon “did not call either fact or character witnesses for his client.” Afterwards McMahon told reporters, “We had a chance to put out our issues, and a jury has spoken, and we respect that verdict.”

During the trial McMahon had said to jurors, “abortion—as is any surgical procedure—isn’t pretty. It’s bloody. It’s real. But you have to transcend that.”

Lengthy coverage of the trial and courtroom arguments is available from the Associated Press here.

While pro-life activists can be grateful for the conviction of Kermit Gosnell, some abortion clinics with similarly disturbing records remain fully operational.

Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, authors of the original article, clarify their views. The pro-abortion Jeff McMahan explores the absurdities of much abortion-related legislation and the considerations that surround killing babies (born or unborn) and animals. Regina A. Rini, meanwhile, finds Giubilini and Minerva’s arguments incoherent and proposes a new framework that permits abortion but rejects infanticide.

On the pro-life side, John Finnis refutes the arguments that humans do not acquire rights until becoming conscious of themselves and that unconscious human beings cannot be harmed, and Francis J. Beckwith contests the claims that babies are merely potential persons and that the burdensomeness of a new life is morally relevant.

Charles Camosy acknowledges the similarity between unborn and newborn infants—a key point of Giubilini and Minerva’s view—but rejects the conclusion that neither group possesses a right to life. Robert P. George and Camosy then dispute whether proposing infanticide constitutes moral madness. View the whole issue here.

Free online articles:

• “Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs” by Christopher Kaczor (First Things, August/September 2011)
• “Embryology: Inconvenient Facts” by William L. Saunders, Jr. (First Things, December 2004)
• “Dualistic Delusions” by Patrick Lee and Robert P. George (First Things, February 2005)
• “Embodied Equality: Debunking Equal Protection Arguments for Abortion Rights” (PDF via SSRN) by Erika Bachiochi (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer 2011)
• “Acorns and Embryos” by Robert P. George and Patrick Lee (The New Atlantis, No. 7, Fall 2004/Winter 2005)
• “Suffer the Violinist: Why the Pro-Abortion Argument from Bodily Autonomy Fails” (PDF) by Richard J. Poupard (Christian Research Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 , 2007)
• “The Wrong of Abortion” (PDF) by Patrick Lee and Robert P. George (from Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, edited by Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Wellman, Blackwell Publishers, 2005)
• “Why Abortion Is Immoral” (PDF) by Don Marquis (Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, April 1989)
• “Human Personhood Begins at Conception” by Peter Kreeft (originally published by the Castello Institute as a Medical Ethics Policy Monograph, 1997)
• “I Was Once a Fetus: An Identity-Based Argument Against Abortion” by Alexander R. Pruss

Books:

• Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice by Francis J. Beckwith (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf (Crossway, 2009)
• Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (second edition) by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (The Witherspoon Institute, 2011)
• The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice by Christopher Kaczor (Routledge, 2010)
• Abortion & Unborn Human Life (second edition) by Patrick Lee (Catholic University of America Press, 2010)

Scholarly articles (limited access):

• “The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion: A Reply to Judith Thomson” by John Finnis (Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2, Winter 1973)
• “Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist” by Francis J. Beckwith (International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, March 1992)

You can find more helpful resources on the blog Pro-Life Philosophy, on the blog of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, and on this page compiled by Princeton Pro-Life, all of which I used in putting together this post. And many of the people cited above have written other books or articles on abortion that I omitted here for the sake of space. Feel free to provide more suggestions in the comment box.

An art restorer at the Vatican has discovered what may be the first Western painting of Native Americans, hidden under grime in a fresco finished in 1494.

The painting is Pinturicchio’s “Christ’s Resurrection,” and the newly uncovered figures—“nude men, who are decorated with feathers and seem to be dancing”—appear in the background of the scene. Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, says they seem to be based on Columbus’ account of his first trip to the New World. More details are available in the Telegraph.

h/t The Dish

Rorandelli Rocco for The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal ran a nice feature this weekend on the Clericus Cup, ”a [soccer] tournament that pits squads from 16 seminaries against each other in a battle for [Rome's] Catholic sports bragging rights—with the utmost humility, of course.”

The North American Martyrs—the team of American seminarians and priests from the Pontifical North American College—are the defending champions. Seminary rector Monsignor James Checchio explains that the squad took that name back in the 1980s because “we lost every game. But now, we’re winners, as the martyrs are.”

I suspect, though the Journal article doesn’t mention this, that the team name is also intended to recall the group of saints collectively known as the North American Martyrs (the most famous of whom is St. Isaac Jogues). From Fordham University’s capsule explanation:

The North American Martyrs were eight Jesuit missionaries commissioned to work among the Huron Native Americans during the mid-17th century.

By the late 1640’s, these brave missionaries were making progress in their labors with the Huron and they were said to have made thousands of converts during this time. Nevertheless, within Huron communities, these men of faith were not universally trusted. . . .

Between the years of 1642 and 1649, eight members of the Society of Jesus were killed in North America, after extreme torture by members of the Huron and Iroquois tribes.

As Micah Zenko (an expert quoted in the McClatchy story) notes at Foreign Policy, these revelations drastically undermine the legal justification for the program:

It is the most important reporting on U.S. drone strikes to date because [reporter Jonathan S.] Landay, using U.S. government assessments, plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides—that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al Qaeda who pose an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. homeland—is false.

Senior officials and agencies have emphasized this point over and over because it is essential to the legal foundations on which the strikes are ultimately based: the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and the U.N. Charter’s right to self-defense.

That the government is targeting people who may or may not be terrorists (and may or may not pose any threat to the U.S.) along with any nearby civilians also complicates efforts to defend the drone program under principles of just war such as discrimination of targets, proportionality, and military necessity.