Why do advocates of abortion and contraception find the conscientious objection of pharmacists and other medical professionals so intolerable? Recognizing a right to conscientious objection, some hospitals allow the shifting of work schedules and duties to respect conscience on a variety of issues… . Continue Reading »
In 1992, Jack Kevorkian proposed establishing a pilot program of euthanasia clinics, which, he argued in the Journal of Forensic Pathology, would be staffed by physician-killers, permitted legally to painlessly terminate patients who request it… . Continue Reading »
The February Issue Is Here!
01.25.2010
The Editors
How did we get here, to this curious and unexpected place? We could never have imagined, for instance, we’d live to see the day a book of the Bible is illustrated by an R-rated comic-strip cartoonist… . Continue Reading »
How did we get here, to this curious and unexpected place? We could never have imagined, for instance, we’d live to see the day a book of the Bible is illustrated by an R-rated comic-strip cartoonist… . Continue Reading »
Justice Thomas is magnificently right in making the case that the whole scheme of requiring the public disclosure of contributions is something that deserves to be struck down… . Continue Reading »
The Satin Slipper, the ambitious second installment of The Paul Claudel Project by The Storm Theatre and Blackfriars Repertory Theatre, makes no pretense about being anything but epic in scope… . Continue Reading »
Haiti’s Devils
01.21.2010
David B. Hart
The ever slightly oafish Pat Robertson (you remember him: that fine Christian gentleman who just a few years ago defended China’s infanticidal one-child policy, lest he imperil his own lucrative business relations with the PRC by publically criticizing the regime) has opined that the earthquake in Haiti… . Continue Reading »
The ever slightly oafish Pat Robertson (you remember him: that fine Christian gentleman who just a few years ago defended China’s infanticidal one-child policy, lest he imperil his own lucrative business relations with the PRC by publically criticizing the regime) has opined that the earthquake in Haiti is only the most recent result of a curse that the nation contracted back in the days of Toussaint Louverture, when “they” (that is, apparently, all the Haitians and their posterity) conducted a ceremony in which “they” made a deal with the devil, promising him their allegiance in exchange for liberation from the French… . Continue Reading »
No wonder the White House was surprisingly nice in its first public statements about Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts campaign. After all, Brown’s victory just handed Obama what he needs to win his own campaign for reelection as president in 2012… . Continue Reading »
In his preface to the second edition of A Short History of Ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre notes the absurdity of his attempt to treat Christian ethics in a mere ten pages sandwiched “between 109 pages on Greek ethics and 149 pages on Western European ethics” from the Renaissance onward… . Continue Reading »
The earthquake and disaster in Haiti immediately brought to my mind the Christmas Tsunami of 2004. Some may remember that when that horrific event struck, President George W. Bush immediately dispatched naval (and other) assistance and committed $350 million dollars (pdf) to relief efforts, to start… . Continue Reading »
There could be no starker”or more revealing”contrast than the exhibitions at London’s major museums this winter: “Pop Life: Art in a Material World” at Tate Britain and “The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700” at the National Gallery… . Continue Reading »
Tsunami and Theodicy
01.15.2010
David B. Hart
Tens of thousands of Haitians have already died in the wake of the devastating earthquake on Tuesday, and tens of thousands more are threatened by disease and a lack of food and clean water. We thought this would be an appropriate moment to revisit David B. Hart’s essay from the March 2005 issue of First Things, written in light of the tsunami that devastated the South Asian coastline in December 2004… . Continue Reading »
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