Since arriving at Baylor in Fall 2003 I have taught the course “Law and Religion in the United States” sixteen times. (Fifteen times at Baylor and once at the University of Colorado when I was serving there as a visiting professor in 2016-17). Among the many issues we cover is public school prayer. We always read Engel v. Vitale (1962), the first Supreme Court prayer case. Depending on what other topics addressed in the course, we read one or more... Read more
“Beware Modern Enthusiasms” is the title of an essay I just published in the April 2022 issue of America Magazine, the premier periodical of the Jesuit Order in the United States. (For the online version, the essay is entitled “What happens when social movements are at odds with Catholic teaching?“). Here’s how the essay begins: One of the great difficulties for any thoughtful Catholic is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff in assessing secular social movements... Read more
Bob Dylan will continue his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour on March 3 in Phoenix. From there, he will travel to Tucson (March 4), Albuquerque (March 6), Lubbock (March 8), and then to Irving (March 10), a suburb of Dallas. During this tour, which began in 2021, Dylan has covered all the songs from his 2020 album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, except two: Crossing the Rubicon and Murder Most Foul. The latter is a 17 minute account of JFK’s... Read more
The journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics just released online my review of Maureen L. Condic’s book Untangling twinning: what science tells us about the nature of human embryos, published in 2020 by the University of Notre Dame Press. Here’s how the review begins: When does an individual living human organism come into being? If one argues “at conception,” then one must deal with the perplexing problem of monozygotic twinning, which occurs after conception and before the beginning of the primitive streak. At some point during... Read more
My essay, “Why Is Sexual Assault Special?: Transactional Sex and Sacred Intuitions,” was just published in The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics. Edited by David Boonin (University of Colorado, Boulder), other contributors include Boonin’s CU Boulder colleagues Michael Tooley and Alastair Norcross as well as Christopher Kaczor (Loyola Marymount University), Alan Soble (University of New Orleans), Edward Feser (Pasadena City College), Cheryl Abbate (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), John Corvino (Wayne State University), and Jessica Flanigan (University of Richmond). Here’s the abstract... Read more
Difficult to believe that tomorrow it will be seven years since my father died. In 2016 I wrote an essay about him at the first anniversary of his death. It was published over at The Catholic Thing. Here it is in its entirety: “Fathers are so necessary as examples and guides for our children in wisdom and virtue. Without father figures, young people often feel orphaned, left adrift at a critical moment in their growth and development.” – Pope Francis... Read more
About two months ago I was invited by Angelus News to write a review of the book, American Pope: Scott Hahn and the Rise of Catholic Fundamentalism (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021). My review was published in early January. Here’s how it begins: Scott Hahn is probably the most influential American Catholic author and speaker over the past three decades. An adult convert to the Catholic Church from Reformed Protestantism, Hahn serves as professor of theology and Scripture at Franciscan University in... Read more
Today’s 2nd reading for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time is from James 2:14-18: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, ” but you do not give them the necessities of the... Read more
My friend, Rusty Reno, published a piece yesterday in The Wall Street Journal that is worth your time, if you are interested in higher education and present trends in the academy. Entitled “Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates,” it begins: I’m not inclined to hire a graduate from one of America’s elite universities. That marks a change. A decade ago I relished the opportunity to employ talented graduates of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the rest. Today? Not so much. As... Read more
The academic journal, Religions, is publishing a special issue on the topic of “God, Ethics, and Christian Traditions.” My contribution to that issue–“Catholicism and the Natural Law: A Response to Four Misunderstandings“–is now accessible online. Just click here. Other contributors to the issue include Daniel Bonevac (University of Texas), Janine Idziak (Loras College), Blake McAllister (Hillsdale College), and my colleague, C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University). Here’s the abstract for my article: This article responds to four criticisms of the Catholic view... Read more
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