One of the most fundamental and ancient moral precepts is Do Good and Avoid Evil. It was expressed (in different words) in the Hippocratic Oath between the fifth and third centuries before Christ. More than a millennium later, St. Thomas...
This must be my month for thinking about my years of 11 years of Jesuit education. While I respect the Jesuits for having taught me how to reason and separate my feelings from my mind, they have used verbal legerdemain to create false impressions...
One of the major issues in bioethics continues to be when a being has “rights.” This is referred to as having “moral status.” For example, if you argue that a child in the womb has no moral status, aborting such a life has less challenges. Abortion...
When I was younger, I recall being asked if I was allergic to “eggs” before I got a flu shot. Oh, for the good old days. Vaccines were produced in eggs and no one worried about the morality of a vaccine. Today is different. A COVID-19 vaccine cannot...
In early April, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote an article concerning the sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church. The outcry made massive headlines the world over. The German scholar notes, “The extent and gravity of the reported...
Sadly, it is true. The violence that was rare a few years ago is becoming more of a day to day activity in our chaotic society. The killings are all too common and since the motive for much of this violence is not always so clear, we seem powerless...
German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831) once asked: What religion would a free people have? His answer to this rhetorical question was that religion had to divorce itself from the absolute certainty of divine revelation because it could not be...
Let’s start with a quiz. With which of the following admonitions below would you disagree? Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid...
