I once heard someone say that the most popular time for pastors to leave town is Trinity Sunday. How true that is, I don’t know. What I do know is that during fifty plus years in the pews I have never heard a comprehensive sermon on the subject. I suspect my experience is not unique. … Read more
In Massachusetts, a young woman, Michelle Carter, has just been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter because, by verbal encouragement—numerous emails and other communications—she aided in the suicide of Conrad Roy III in July 2014. Mr. Roy had stepped out of the cab of a vehicle, filling with lethal fumes, only to hear Ms. Carter tell … Read more
The Journal of Medical Ethics, a leading British bioethical journal, has done it again. Back in 2011, they offered us the barbaric thesis of Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva defending infanticide: the two authors argued for “after-birth abortion,” claiming that the killing of a child post-birth would be justifiable if done under “circumstances … that … Read more
Love, mercy, and human dignity are all wonderful things, and it’s right for the Church to emphasize them. It’s also right to take them seriously, and try to understand what they are, what’s behind them, and where they point. To do that we need to remember that on the Christian view—indeed, on any sane view—we … Read more
I pointed out a month or two ago that the kind of meritocracy we have makes people stupid, mostly because it’s based on a technological attitude toward human life. Thought has an order, but not one we can fully grasp, so if it’s reduced to certified expertise and made a sort of industrial process it … Read more