27 Aug 2018

How My Shirt Changed the Day

For the second time in a month, I had a conversation in the grocery checkout line that left me reeling. This time it began while unloading my produce and grinning at the two big-eyed, energetic young boys behind me. Their mom caught my eye and and she looked friendly as she inquired, “What is that?” The red cabbage in my hand? I thought. “I’m sorry, my produce?” She clarified, “I’ve seen that shirt on people

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11 Jul 2018

Round Table: Euthanasia

The 2016 film Me Before You stars Emilia Clarke as an awkward young woman who needs employment to help support her poor working class family. After losing her job at a local bakery, she applies to become a caretaker for the adult son of a wealthy family. The son, played by Sam Claflin, was an active and successful young man before being injured in a motorcycle accident that left him as a quadriplegic. The two

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19 Jul 2017

Like So Many Things

Like So Many Things Through invisible fissures bones invested the jelly and were spooled around with veins that traced a floating scaffolding of fibers, twitching with electricity, suffused with untouched blood newly made for this alone. This new being is like a heron perched on the concrete box that catches the beach after the hurricane swept away the sand. How still he stands before he lifts into the heavy air, rolling his wings once and

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07 Jul 2016

Some Women Just Don’t Know What’s Good For ‘Em

I’d like to ask the reader to take a moment and join me in a round of applause for women. I did not know this until recently, but they’ve all been fighting a very important battle in the Supreme Court these last few months, and it seems they have, at last, emerged victorious. I do not know how they all managed to cram in the courtroom at once, or even how they managed to do

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02 Sep 2015

Homoousios and the Dignity of Children

In the days of the Nicean Council, during the Arian Christological controversy that rocked the early church, the absence of a single Greek letter made a great deal of difference. Per the formulation that later became the Nicene Creed, God the Father was understood to be of the same (homoousios) essence as God the Son, not merely similar (homoiousios). This doctrine continues to govern Christological thought today, and forms an essential component of a proper

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14 Jul 2014

Saint Gianna Beretta Molla

My last article was published on the same day as the SCOTUS ruling on the Hobby Lobby case. In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that for-profit corporations, including Hobby Lobby, are not required to provide coverage on contraception and abortifacients if these violate their religious beliefs. (Let us focus here on the fact that Hobby Lobby was opposed to abortifacients, not preventative contraceptives; the Green family accepted 16 out of 20 contraceptive

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