Laudato Si' Research Institute, Campion Hall

Democracy is an almost universal ideal, being enshrined in a huge majority of the constitutions around the world, but it has proven very hard to implement in practice. A fundamental question in political science is how to measure democracy, a contested issue that remains unsettled with some scholars advocating for minimalist approaches and others arguing for maximalist ones. In this paper I will start by analyzing the theoretical debate about the measurement of democracy, reviewing the arguments supporting the different approaches, to then analyze one of the maximalist indices: the Democracy Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). I will enumerate the advantages and disadvantages of the EIU Index by contrasting it with the one by Freedom House, and will conclude by suggesting some methodological changes to tackle the severe disadvantages it has, in terms of validity, reliability and legitimacy.

Paper for the seminar "Laudato Si' and the Path to COP22", held at the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences on 28 September 2016, focusing on those aspects of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ most relevant to the Catholic Church’s engagement in the COP22 summit and beyond.

Pope Francis transformed the climate change debate in 2015 by publishing his groundbreaking encyclical Laudato Si’, being widely credited by analysts and heads of state for raising the level of ambition of the Paris Climate Agreement by framing the ecological crisis in moral terms. This paper analyzes Pope Francis's contribution to highlight both the urgency and the injustice of the climate crisis. In doing so, the essay highlights the unique opportunity of world religions to enhance climate policy by stressing the moral imperative to take action.

Book chapter for the volume "Laudato Si': El cuidado de la casa común, una conversión necesaria a la ecología humana", edited by Federico Lombardi SJ and Fernando Sánchez Campos.

https://bac-editorial.es/es/estudios-y-ensayos/1645-laudato-si-el-cuidado-de-la-casa-comun-una-conversion-necesaria-a-la-ecologia-humana.html

We are all opposed—at least ostensibly—to mindless animal cruelty. Almost no one defended Michael Vick and his cohorts when they tortured and killed dogs for their dog fighting ring. Imagine Michael Vick had been selling a product—say dog-skin handbags from the “losing” dogs—that financially supported and enabled the continued torture of more dogs. We would not only not buy these dog-skin handbags, we would boycott the handbags and urge others not to buy them as well. This essay argues that we are a lot more like Michael Vick than we care to imagine. No, we’re not highly paid football players and we won’t go to jail or go bankrupt for our participation in animal cruelty. But like Michael Vick, we participate in animal cruelty, and we are similarly raised in a way that we do not see its wrongfulness. How do we participate in animal cruelty? By spending billions of dollars each year financially supporting an incredibly common and pervasive form of animal cruelty: factory farming, which involves raising pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and other animals in deplorable conditions. And, like Michael Vick, we financially support it in part because we have an addiction. More specifically, we are addicted to the taste of low-cost industrial meat. As a result, we refuse to see our financial support of large scale cruelty to animals.

Although almost completely ignored, Aquinas’s account of persons with severe intellectual disabilities is key to his understanding of human persons and their salvation. Aquinas extensively addresses questions of human impairment, and for Aquinas physical and mental impairment are not nearly as important as moral or spiritual impairment. Contrary to those who focus on Aquinas’s account of rationality and suppose he thinks that a person must exercise rationality in order to be moral and in the image of God, Aquinas’s view is that persons with severe mental impairments have a distinct spiritual advantage, due to the impeccability of the gift of wisdom given them in their baptism.

These short remarks are a belated expression of thanks for the gift in my life that was Poteat. When Poteat died, I was spending time at a Trappist monastery, and never got word until after the funeral. I greatly regretted not being there. While I had the opportunity to tell Poteat during his lifetime how much he meant to me and the wonderful gift he gave to me, after his death, I never got or took the opportunity to tell that to others. This is my very belated attempt so to do.

Despite the expansive literature detailing various arguments for or against the use of MANH in caring for the dying and debilitated, the thesis of this paper is that a large part, if not the main thrust, of the debates over MANH have been inadequate and misguided on a number of different levels. The paper hopes to reorient and redirect the debate by attending to the medical history of MANH (part one) and recent medical developments with regard to MANH (part five), examining and contextualizing the earliest debate (i.e. in the 1950s) over MANH among moral theologians (part two), a more recent debate over MANH involving numerous American Catholic bishops (part three), and critically evaluating the types of moral arguments that preoccupy many of those who currently write on the ethics of MANH (part four).

At present, there is to our knowledge no Catholic institution engaged in overseeing the practice of embryo adoption (EA), nor any institution that currently oversees the practice explicitly claiming to do so in accord with Catholic ethical and religious principles. On the one hand, this is understandable, since the Catholic Church has yet to rule on the moral permissibility of the practice. On the other hand, this is somewhat surprising, since the Catholic tradition is arguably the most vociferous advocate of the dignity and rights of cryopreserved embryos. For many cryopreserved embryos, adoption represents their sole opportunity for continuing the human life cycle to which they are by nature ordered. Thus, one might expect some Catholic institution to inaugurate a program to aid such embryos, assuming EA does not come to be seen as incompatible with Catholic morality. In this essay, our goal is to provide a vision and a framework for the institutional oversight of the practice of EA done in accord with Catholic teaching.

This essay focuses on the reconciliatory facet of the Eucharist, highlighting its transformative and restorative character. In so doing, it seeks to show how the Eucharist can shape our perception and practices with regard to penitence and retributive justice, two controversial aspects of reconciliation. The essay proceeds in three sections. The first section focuses on how acknowledgment of our need for reconciliation shapes our identity, showing us not only who we are as sinners, but also who we are called to be as a reconciled people. The second section examines practices of penitence in the Church’s history to show how these practices of penitence contribute to the practice of what I shall call Eucharistic reconciliation. The third and final section will examine both ecclesial and secular practices of punishment in the light of the practice of Eucharistic reconciliation, and in doing so seek to show how punishment—properly understood and applied—can be understood to be a part of the practice of Eucharistic reconciliation.

Historically, most if not all Catholics have abstained from eating animal flesh as an expression of their faith. Although most have abstained only for certain periods of time, others have abstained permanently. While Catholics have abstained for a variety of reasons,
this essay focuses on distinctively theological reasons Catholics, especially in the early centuries of Catholicism, have chosen to abstain from consuming animal flesh. On the one hand, this essay will show how such abstinence has been an aspect of the spiritual practice of fasting and a response to the capital vice of gluttony. On the other hand, it will show how such abstinence has been predicated on Catholic doctrines concerning creation and nature, the Fall, and eschatology.

" One reason why the question of gestating abandoned embryos has produced such debate is that moral theologians do not agree as to how the choice of a woman to gestate an abandoned cryopreserved embryo is most adequately described. Moralists have been divided, alternatively using descriptions such as “surrogacy,” “adoption,” and “rescue.” What makes these alternative descriptions particularly significant is that depending on one’s description, the act to be done can be evaluated as either inherently wrong (i.e., some forms of surrogacy), morally optional (e.g., most cases of adoption), or verging on the morally obligatory (e.g., some forms of rescue).
In this paper I evaluate the adequacy of each of these categorizations, proceeding as follows: first, I present a well-known case of a particular woman’s choice to gestate an abandoned embryo. I then examine the appropriateness of the categories of surrogacy, adoption, and rescue for morally evaluating this case and other analogous cases. I argue that, at least in the type of case I present, if in choosing to gestate an abandoned embryo one is also choosing to adopt the child, then it can be morally appropriate to gestate an abandoned embryo."

In the light of the moral principles and fundamental goods articulated by Donum vitae, one may conclude that under some circumstances it is appropriate and even morally praiseworthy for women to allow themselves to be impregnated with abandoned frozen embryos, gestating and raising them as their children. Under appropriate circumstances, such a decision is legitimately seen, not as surrogacy, but as a form of “adoption,” and as such can witness a profound form of Christian hospitality.

In this paper, I wish to look at John Ryan's considerable interest in questions of birth regulation. My thesis is twofold: first, that Ryan's views on the regulation of family size were integrally connected with his economic and political thought. Second, the right to enter the married state and the number of children one has is a not merely an issue of personal satisfaction and happiness, but also a question of the common good of society.

If it is part of the tragedy of the fall that we do violence to other creatures, that we kill other animals for food, clothing, sport, for testing medicines, shave creams and eye shadows, then our killing of other animals, must, in some way, be seen as a part of a “culture of death.” Why should we hesitate to kill other animals? First and foremost, we should hesitate because of respect for the intrinsic goodness of their lives. That non-human creatures have intrinsic value -- i.e. are not to be seen merely as matter to be manipulated -- is a fact which John Paul II calls a “truth of creation.” Secondly, our doing or aiding and abetting any unnecessary violence against other animals initiates us into the culture of death, and as such wounds our characters. But is the killing of other animals unnecessary? In many parts of the world, including our own, it is clear that almost all of us can lead flourishing lives without the killing of other animals. Thus, if we as Christians are to be faithful to the call to be witnesses to a consistent gospel of life, if we are to speak as Christians with an evangelical voice to our culture, then we will seek to avoid needless suffering and death to other animals, at least those which will in no way produce fruit for the kingdom of God.