Robert T. Miller

I differ with Robert George (and perhaps Patrick Lee) on some foundational issues in meta-ethics, and that is why, I think, they and I disagree in some respects about the dignity of, and respect due to, human bodies, whether dead or alive. Since my view is for some people the less familiar, I ought . . . . Continue Reading »

Claire V. McCusker’s treatment of Bodies: The Exhibition may be the best defense that can be constructed for it from within the Catholic moral tradition, but McCusker reaches her conclusions, I think, only by unwittingly departing from that tradition in important respects, both in her . . . . Continue Reading »

Sandro Magister reports from Rome that Fr. Alberto Bonandi, a famous moral theologian, has published an article in Teologia , the journal of the Theological Faculty of Milan and Northern Italy, in which he argues that Catholics, married in the Church but subsequently divorced and remarried civilly, . . . . Continue Reading »

I agree, Frederica, when you say today that Jesus was speaking to an oppressed minority, citizens of an occupied country, when he told them to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. One thing that follows from this is that his advice does not directly translate into policy prescriptions for . . . . Continue Reading »

According to the Zenit news service (linked here in the Daily Dispatch for July 30, 2006), Pope Benedict XVI used a Sunday Angelus message to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. "In the name of God," Benedict said, "I appeal to all those responsible for this spiral of . . . . Continue Reading »

While Christoph Cardinal Schönborn and Professor Stephen Barr were arguing over questions of evolution and teleology in the last few issues of First Things , down in Pennsylvania Judge John E. Jones III was deciding Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District . The case arose when the Dover . . . . Continue Reading »

Despite all the public outrage at the horror of an innocent woman being starved to death, despite the desperate and pathetic pleas of her parents, despite even a special act of Congress requiring the federal courts to intervene, those courts have let stand an order that Terri Schiavo die”or . . . . Continue Reading »

While some scholars have argued that there is, in terms of both grammar and purpose, only one religion clause in the First Amendment, the language of the courts has typically been framed in terms of an “establishment clause” and a “free exercise clause,” and the presumed goal is then to . . . . Continue Reading »

Reading First Things may disqualify you from sitting on a jury, at least if a lawyer decides that such reading shows that you are too involved in the practice of your religion. Just ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the federal appellate court with jurisdiction for . . . . Continue Reading »

God, Locke, and Equality by Jeremy Waldron Cambridge University Press. 263 pp. $22 paper The account of human equality that we find in the mature writings of John Locke is “as well-worked out a theory of basic equality as we have in the canon of political philosophy,” says Jeremy Waldron, . . . . Continue Reading »