The autonomous person, liberated from the constraints of the past and free perhaps even from the stigma of social disapproval of his chosen lifestyle, has become the new god of the Canadian civil religion, almost totally eclipsing whatever communitarian elements have managed to survive the cultural shifts of recent decades. Continue Reading »
Last night Yale’s campus pro-life group—after a year in which they participated in meetings and even helped raise money for the organization—became the first group in living memory to be denied membership in the Social Justice Network of Dwight Hall. Billing itself as an . . . . Continue Reading »
From time to time a member of the Christian left will admonish the Christian right to stop obsessing about sex. This is a clever move because in addition to undercutting traditional sexual morality it also suggests that those who are concerned with the topic are acting on some secret ulterior . . . . Continue Reading »
Teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy last semester, I hoped to cruise through the Purgatorio to make sure we completed the Paradiso by semester’s end. But my students wouldn’t let me skip canto 25—they stopped there, awestruck. I think we spent longer in the seventh cornice on the mount of . . . . Continue Reading »
The British public is currently being scandalized by the revelations that hospitals there have been incinerating the remains of aborted infants as clinical waste, in some cases doing so to generate electricity for hospitals. Even in that country which has so steadfastly refused to have the abortion . . . . Continue Reading »
Are pro-lifers wrong to speak of the “unborn child”? A reader annoyed with Ramesh Ponnuru’s use of the phrase wrote him, saying, “There is no child until birth. Late in pregnancy the fetus may have some moral status but it is still not a child.” Ramesh replied: “Merriam-Webster’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Maybe by conservative donors being smarter with their money. . . . . Continue Reading »
Roe v. Wade did far more than create a constitutional right to abortion—it crippled the pro-choice and energized the pro-life movement, creating one of the largest campaigns of moral suasion in American history. Even while nationalizing abortion politics, the Supreme Court’s decision also . . . . Continue Reading »
Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization by charles c. camosy cambridge, 284 pages, $29.99 Peter Singer has long argued that we need a revolution in our ethical thinking every bit as radical as the Copernican revolution in cosmology. One of the central tasks of this revolution is the . . . . Continue Reading »
Last week, Kimberly Hyatt of Patheos asked why Christians are mean in “Look at the Christians: See How Mean They Are” . “Perhaps it is past time for us to stop focusing on what others are doing or trying to do and start taking responsibility for our own actions and their . . . . Continue Reading »
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