News - Culture of Life RSS Feed

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.

Medical decisions such as COVID-19 vaccination should not be based primarily on external pressures

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.

Something was happening in the land of Judah, and word of it reached the descendants of King David living in exile.

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.

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.

By the time you read this, America will be returning back to normal. We will be getting over our temporary obsession with ventilators and respirators, with testing and vaccines, and with daily totals of infections and deaths.

Saint Paul’s Letters to the Philippians and to the Romans can be of immense practical and spiritual assistance for us all, especially during this time of our world’s great need for the Word of God.

Many who obtain a driver’s license elect to become organ donors. In general, organ donation is perceived as an altruistic act without ethical controversy.

The vast majority of calls taken by the ethicists concern end-of-life decision-making. The principal analytical tool used in these cases is the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of treatment.

Dogma has a bad name these days, and that’s bad for the Church and for America. Senator Dianne Feinstein (DCA) spoke for growing numbers of Americans when, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2017, she criticized Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

Bioethics focuses increasingly on end-of-life concerns. The incredible advances in science and medicine help people to live longer lives, but also present many ethical dilemmas as death approaches.