On the Square Today

Wesley J. Smith on our neurotic fear of suffering :

Ironically, our many medical triumphs and the consequential receding of serious suffering from everyday experience created a concomitant terror of travail that threatens the morality of society. For example, when people actually did die in agony, there was little agitation for euthanasia. Yet today, when writhing demises are entirely preventable—even if it occasionally requires sedation—many support voluntary killing as the best solution to incurable disease and disability.

Also today, Anne Hendershott on the new front in the Catholic campus culture war :

Last month’s Vatican decree that the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru has lost the right to call itself pontifical or Catholic has resonance for Catholic colleges and universities in the United States. While Vatican representatives say they have spent years trying to persuade the University of Peru to comply with Church guidelines for Catholic universities, most American Catholic colleges and universities have devoted several decades to ignoring them.