Children’s relationship to the political community is fundamentally different from that of adults, because it is mediated through their belonging to a family and living under the authority of their parents. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/04/9880/?utm_source=RTA+Moschella+Children&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email Read more

In elementary school the teacher would demonstrate the magnetic field of a magnet by putting iron filings on a paper right over the magnet. Sure enough, the filings would get ordered according to the pattern of the magnetic field of the magnet. I often use that homely example to illustrate what the Western tradition has meant by natural law. The filings stand for us humans and the magnetic pattern represents natural law. Insofar as we abide by the magnetic field... Read more

Media voices and progressive activists for same-sex marriage are appealing to judicial fiat because they know they won’t always have public opinion on their side. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/04/9789/ Read more

Sheldrake is best known for his notion of “morphic resonance.” According to the theory, patterns of behavior resonate across time and space between similar organisms. Habits and skills learned by one organism or person become easier for later members of the species to learn because a habit learned by one individual becomes part of the species’ form, embedded in something like a collective mind. Once one rat learns his way through a maze, other rats have an easier time figuring... Read more

A giant “monumental” stone structure discovered beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee in Israel has archaeologists puzzled as to its purpose and even how long ago it was built. The mysterious structure is cone shaped, made of “unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders,” and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons the researchers said. That makes it heavier than most modern-day warships. Rising nearly 32 feet high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet. To put that in perspective, the... Read more

Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven’t heard about these sickening accusations? It’s not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell’s former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term... Read more

For years those in the pro-life movement have assumed that technology is on their side, because they have assumed that the debate was about when life begins. In an era where friends share 4-D pictures of unborn children on their Facebook pages, a case for the humanity of the unborn is easy to make. Yet it is not enough. After Tiller is a reminder that the debate today is much more about why life is valuable than when life begins.... Read more

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt writes movingly about the Nazis’ failed attempt to plunge the entire Holocaust into silence. The Nazis thought they could exterminate the Jews so totally that not a single voice would remain to describe what had happened. This would mean literally erasing the Jews from the face of the earth—the ultimate demonstration of the totalitarian state’s power to reshape reality. But, Arendt concluded, this power has its limits; there is no such thing as complete... Read more

Though people may describe themselves by using terms like “gay” or “queer” which are commonly used in today’s culture, as Christians who believe in man created in the image of God, we should ask if these cultural terms are, in fact, true ontological categories of the human person, in accord with the blueprint of human existence. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/04/homosexual-orientation-or-disorientation Read more

Last week, my family and I celebrated the first night of Passover in our current hometown—Lumberton, North Carolina (population: 22,000). We have lived here since 2009, when I took a position as an assistant professor of religion at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. We are the only Israelis in town and, as far as I know, the only Jews (though there was once a small community here). But it’s not as lonely as it might sound, thanks in... Read more