On-screen Characters/Off-screen Life

The standard response to these “what ifs” is that a sitcom is light comedy that attempts to appeal to its contemporary audience, perhaps in part by steering clear of deeper matters, particularly those that might divide and alienate viewers. And in this Friends resembles most of...
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Reclaiming Feminism’s Christian Roots

  I suppose I first became a feminist as a rebellious young woman at an Irish Catholic convent school—this would be back in the 1950s, just edging into the early 1960s. This was a period in Irish life which was traditional and conservative. Since the foundation of the Irish...
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Is Euthanasia Next for Ireland?

  As readers of this journal only too painfully know, in May 2018 Ireland voted by a two-to-one margin to remove from its Constitution the amendment protecting the right to life of unborn children. It was a devastating blow not just to the pro-life movement in Ireland, but...
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Defeating Technocracy Is Crucial to Life

  Pro-life advocacy and policies are implacably opposed by the elites of the West. The United Nations promotes abortion access as an international norm. Leaders of the European Union continually criticize and attempt to stifle prolife laws in Poland and Hungary.1 All of the...
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John Leo: Principle and Prescience

When I learned that John Leo had retired as editor-in-chief of Minding the Campus, my thoughts leaped to T.S. Eliot’s final prayer at the end of “Ash Wednesday”: “Suffer me not to be separated.” The news came as a wrench, a decisive twist to the bolt on a repository of shaping...
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On Physical and Moral Plagues

  Nicholas Frankovich has written a very thoughtful essay—provocative in the best sense—building a case for avoiding absolute positions on how to protect the nation against the coronavirus and on how to approach the abortion issue. It’s a fine essay and deserves a respectful...
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About Conspiracy Theories

Psalm 83 For they conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant (83:5).    “Conspiracy theorist” is a term thrown about much these days, usually to belittle those who believe that sometimes people engage in, well, conspiracies. Call someone a conspiracy theorist...
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Our Freedom, Their Life: What We Owe the Unborn and the Infirm Elderly

As an argument against face-mask mandates, “My body, my choice” collapses, for the same reason that it collapses as an argument to justify abortion. The body of the person asserting freedom of choice is not the only body in question. I may prefer to be free from the inconvenience...
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How to Assess the 2020 Election

  I’m just coming off a long Andrew Sullivan blog post, and I beg my gentle readers not to think less of me for poking into the thought processes of a writer who is not, by general definition—or for that matter his own—the hottest new pledge bro for Knights of Columbus. I...
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INTRO Winter 2021

  Recently while listening to a Jordan Peterson podcast I heard the bestselling author say this: “Those who formulate the best arguments win. They win everything.” Well then, I thought, why haven’t we won? Why hasn’t the movement for life turned back the movement for death?...
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