Francis J. Beckwith's Reflections on Faith, Ethics and Culture
This is my latest over at The Catholic Thing. Here's how it begins: As readers of The Catholic Thing are well aware, the Journal of Medical Ethics, a periodical to which I have contributed, recently published the controversial article, “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?”, written by the philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. Throughout the article, the authors refer to fetuses and newborns as “potential persons,” which, I am sure, sounds like an odd … [Read more...]
The following is an open letter authored by Francis Cardinal George, the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago. It is addressed to the Catholics of his diocese: Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: I write to you concerning a most serious matter that negatively impacts the church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Jan. 20 that almost all employers, … [Read more...]
Sunday, January 22, is the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (1973). Even though many citizens reject the opinion, not many know why it is so flawed. In chapter 2 of my 2007 book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press), I offer a detailed analysis of Roe and some subsequent Supreme Court opinions. An earlier version of that chapter was published in 2006 (1.1, pp. 37-72) in the inaugural issue of the Liberty University Law Review under the title … [Read more...]
You can find their website here. … [Read more...]
That is the title of a 2006 article I published in the Journal of Medicine & Philosophy (31: 177-203). Here's the abstract, as it appears on the article's first page: This article is a critical review of David Boonin’s book, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge University Press, 2002), a significant contribution to the literature on this subject and arguably the most important monograph on abortion published in the past twenty years. Boonin’s defense of abortion consists almost … [Read more...]
That is the title of my latest column at The Catholic Thing. Here's how it begins: Over at the website Public Discourse, two outstanding Catholic philosophers, Christopher Tollefsen and Christopher Kaczor, have published essays about the morality of the tactics of the prolife group, Live Action. Two other Catholic philosophers, Robert P. George and Joseph Bottum have weighed in as well. Live Action recently released a video that included two of its members posing as a pimp and prostitute … [Read more...]
Just read about this at Mirror of Justice (HT: Rick Garnett): Notre Dame Vita Institute In furtherance of Project Guadalupe's goal to form the next generation of pro-life leadership through scholarship and service, the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life is pleased to announce its inaugural Notre Dame Vita Institute to be held June 12-24, 2011, administered under the auspices of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. Held on the beautiful Notre Dame campus, the Vita … [Read more...]
I have the honor of serving as program chair for the 21st annual conference of the University Faculty for Life, which will be held at the University of Notre Dame on June 10-11, 2011. The on-campus host is Notre Dame philosophy professor, David Solomon, W.P. and H.B. White Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture, where I served as the Mary Anne Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in 2008-2009. If you are a prolife academic (or retired academic), you should join UFL. The annual … [Read more...]
I recently published this review in the journal Faith & Philosophy 27.4 (2010): 478-482. Here's how it begins: It has been nearly four decades since the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is a right to abortion protected by the U.S. Constitution. Yet, the question ofabortion’s moral and legal permissibility, and all the attendant issues about the nature of law, human persons, and morality, continue to be seriously (and sometimes not so seriously) engaged in the public … [Read more...]
Jonah Goldberg of the National Review just published an edited volume, Proud to be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation (Harper, 2010). It consists of 22 chapters by young conservatives telling their stories about why they tilt right. I have not read the book, but the names of some of the contributors I know well, including the insightful Matthew Lee Anderson of Mere Orthodoxy. There was a time when I was a young conservative. (I turn 50 in two weeks). In my book, Return to Rome: … [Read more...]
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