Latest Posts

2006 Catholic High School Honor Roll Released

This year’s Catholic High School Honor Roll has been released. Go to Acton’s redesigned Honor Roll webpage to view both the top-50 and the category leader lists. The webpage also features a virtual newsroom that tracks news stories about Honor Roll schools. Continue Reading...

The Baby Market

America’s fertility clinics are now allowing parents to screen embryos according to sex, and more are opting for this practice. Kevin Schmiesing observes that the idea of children as “gift” is under increasing stress as alternative and sometimes conflicting notions of child as right, as burden, or as consumer item compete for dominance. Continue Reading...

A Case against Chimeras: Part IV

The penultimate installment of the series on the biblical/theological case against chimeras focuses on the impact and significance of redemption. Redemption – Romans 8:18–27 Flowing out of our discussion on creation and fall, it is the recognition that there still are limits on human activity with regard to animals that is most important for us in this discussion. Continue Reading...

BreakPoint’s ‘The Point’

Chuck Colson introduces a new initiative at BreakPoint, a blog called “The Point,” which will feature contributions from “sixteen people blogging on pretty much everything under the sun: persecution of Christians, literary feuds, comedy troupes, AIDS, the Pope’s comments on Islam, TV dramas . Continue Reading...

A Case against Chimeras: Part III

Part III of our series focuses on the human fall into sin and the disastrous consequences that follow from it. Fall – Genesis 9:1–7 The harmonious picture of the created order is quickly marred, however, by the fall of human beings. Continue Reading...

A Change of Climate at The Economist

At the request of Andy Crouch, who is among other things editorial director for The Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today, I have taken a look at the editorial from The Economist’s special issue from Sept. Continue Reading...

The Inevitable Loophole

On yet another day in a long season of bad news for Catholic schools in major urban areas, Chicago’s historic high school seminary is slated to close. Michael J. Petrilli addresses the broader context of the problem in this analysis on NRO. Continue Reading...

A Case against Chimeras: Part II

Part II of our week-long series on the ethics of chimeras begins with an examination of the creation account in the book of Genesis. Creation – Genesis 1:26–30 The creation account in Genesis provides us with essential insights into the nature of the created world, from rocks and trees to birds and bees. Continue Reading...

The Catholicity of the Reformation: Musings on Reason, Will, and Natural Law, Part 1

This post will introduce what I intend to be an extended series concerned with recovering and reviving the catholicity of Protestant ethics. Protestant catholicity? Isn’t this an oxymoron? It may come as a surprise in light of a common stereotype of Protestant theology, but the older Protestant understanding of reason, the divine will, and natural law actually provided a bulwark against the notion of a capricious God, unbounded by truth and goodness, as Pope Benedict recently pointed out in relation to Islam’s understanding of God. Continue Reading...