During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of pregnancies and abortion-vulnerable women coming to the St. John Paul II Life Center and Vitae Clinic in Austin, TX, greatly increased.
The moral acceptability of using abortion-derived cell lines in research has been an area of debate in Catholic bioethics for some time. The Magisterium first weighed in over a decade ago.
Catholic schools operate on a shoestring, struggling to stay open each year. Does the Church have the bandwidth to assume the education of children with special needs?
During the past year and a half, individuals, families, and communities have experienced the fullness of social isolation, unfamiliar public health restrictions, long-term uncertainty, elevated anxiety, depression, suicidality, and escalations of mental health uncertainty.
Video is such a powerful medium that sometimes no amount of media manipulation, either by deliberate magnification or intentional disregard, can reduce the arresting nature of an event so captured.
You drive through a beautiful city park to arrive at my senior care community. As you approach the entrance, you see the American flag unfurling as it is lowered reverently from the flagpole in the middle of the green. It is 5 p.m., and this respectful ceremony is repeated every day.
The year 2014 saw a statistic that had not occured in decades: human life expectancy in this country declined. That decline has been attributed to alcoholism, drug overdoses, and suicides — diseases of despair. This phenomenon preceded COVID, which then exacerbated the problem.
Jérôme Lejeune, a French medical doctor and worldclass geneticist, was declared venerable — the first step on the road to canonization — on the eve of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that “discovered” a constitutional right to abortion.
In our time of loneliness, made worse by the frailty of families, the withering of community life, and the mutual suspicion of the sexes, many turn to same-sex relations as something, anything to make their lives bearable.
We live in an age of scientific materialism. One of the signs of this philosophy is how the traditional Western idea of the soul has been submerged beneath the materialist premise that matter is the cause of life.
2020 has been a year to remember. As the holidays approach, people long to return to old routines in work, school, and socializing without fear and without social distancing. Yet at this time, the Church’s liturgical calendar and highest teaching office are calling us beyond a return to routine, to reflect on ultimate realities, and to face new moral challenges in society.
Respect Life Month this year coincides with the final weeks of the most crucial election yet for the pro-life cause. For Catholics, the ballot decisions involve not only life or death, but also the integrity of our faith.
by Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. and Stephen Hannan, M.D.
A recent article in Legatus Magazine raises the question of “whether a person declared ‘brain dead’ is, in fact, dead.” The M.D.-author does not appear to dispute the claim that the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain function constitutes death, but instead suggests that clinical testing as a means of determining brain death may be unreliable.
Pope St. John Paul II’s guidance from the Holy Spirit allowed him to accomplish miraculous feats. His dynamic leadership for life inspired the formation of the amazing St. John Paul II Life Center in Austin, Texas.
As Independence Day arrives in this year of the coronavirus, we begin to taste again the basic freedom of personal interaction with friends, family, colleagues, and with our Blessed Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist. Yet as public health restrictions are cautiously eased, a question of life and liberty looms on the horizon: the COVID-19 vaccination.