Paul Stark has brilliantly woven in a new analogy (pizza making) to make clear the fundamental distinction between the construction of things and the development of life. (The German Constitutional Court in 1975 and 1993 supported this distinction. That support can be found via one of the articles linked in Stark’s piece.) Unborn children aren’t […]
Category: Philosophy
Here is a link to a good article by John Conley in America magazine about a panel presentation at the annual conference of the American Philosophical Association. The panel was hosted by Jorge Garcia and featured talks by Celia Wolf-Devine, Anthony McCarthy, and Francis Beckwith. Here is Conley’s concluding paragraph: “The most compelling argument against […]
Frank Beckwith was interviewed by Reformed pro-life activist Jonathon Van Maren in “Pro-Life Arguments for the 21st Century: Dr. Francis J. Beckwith & Jonathon Van Maren.” He talks about the popular and academic arguments that are effective in the 21st century.
Categories
A Seamless Garment that Fits
David Paul Deaval writes, “A Seamless Garment that Fits,” for Crisis Magazine. In it Deaval talks about the inadequacies of the various pro-abortion arguments that pro-lifers don’t care about the born. He also asks what would be the “threads” ina genuine seamless garment. HT Prolife Center at the University of St. Thomas
As I was preparing for the upcoming issue of ProVita, I ran across this book on Amazon: Embryos Under the Microscope: Ths Diverging Meanings of Life, by Jane Maienschein. The author claims to be giving a history of the human knowledge of embryology so that ethical decisions can be based on accurate scientific information. What I found […]
Here is a link to an excellent speech given by Cardinal Raymond Burke to the Rome Life Forum on May 3, 2014. The speech is largely a reflection on Pope Saint John Paul II’s great encyclical Evangelium Vitae. http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/cardinal-burke-s-address-to-international-pro-life-conference-in-rome-may-3rd Richard M.
UFL member Pete Colosi gave a talk about the importance of specifically religious discourse in public square debates about moral issues, including esp. the life issues. He focuses on the dialogue between Habermas, Pera, and Benedict XVI/Ratzinger. He points out, for instance, that Habermas promotes the idea that religious ideas should have equal footing in […]
I just had the occasion to re-read a terrific speech that then-Cardinal Ratzinger gave back in 1991 entitled “The Problem of Threats to Human Life.”http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=187&repos=1&subrepos=&searchid=292732 The speech anticipated Pope John Paul II’s great encyclical Evangelium Vitae. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html Soon after re-reading the speech, I realized that Father John Conley, SJ, gave a talk at the 2005 University Faculty for […]
Janet Smith gave a great plenary address at this years UFL Conference on the question of whether it is morally permissible to lie to abortion clinic workers to obtain the truth about their practices. She notes at the outset that both St. Thomas and St. Augustine believed that all lies are immoral, but in some […]
The Spring 2012 NCBQ arrived in yesterday’s mail (many academic journals tend to run a few months behind), and I’d like to make brief mention of several things from the previous issue (Winter 2011) and the new one. In the Winter 2011 issue there is a review, by Germain Kopaczynski, OFM, of Joseph W. Dellapenna’s Dispelling the Myths […]