On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , Peter J. Leithart reflects on the meaning of the Word becoming flesh:

The incarnation is not an act of mere sympathy. The Word becomes flesh to transform it from within, to transfigure flesh through the cross and resurrection. In death, the Word is sown in weakness, perishability, mortality, shame, but in his death to flesh God begins to work reconciliation. He is raised with power, with immortality and imperishability, with eternal glory undiminished and undiminishable, no longer flesh but wholly infused with the Spirit.

Also today, Sherif Girgis on Doug Kmiec’s defense of the HHS regulation requiring employers to cooperate materially in contraception and early abortions:

The HHS regulation  does  require employers to cooperate  materially  in contraception and early abortions. Whether this makes those employers “complicit” in the morally important sense depends on whether such cooperation can be justified; the question can’t be resolved, as Kmiec seems to assume, by considering just the  form  of prescribed involvement, apart from its content and effects. In the case of Catholic employers, I can’t see how the prescribed involvement wouldn’t seriously prejudice witness to the Church’s teaching that contraception is immoral and abortion gravely unjust, and thereby undermine commitments integral to the mission that informs and justifies any of the Church’s activities.