By Lucia A. Silecchia “The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.” Thanks to the Disney franchise’s uncanny ability to generate memorable movie tunes and some time spent recently with a young “Little Mermaid” fan, this line keeps running through my mind. Like any good jingle, it has wormed its way into my ears. At […]
By William Saunders, IHE Scholar and Director of the MA in Human Rights Around the turn of the century, I met Saint Josephine Bakhita amid a forgotten and ignored conflict in a foreign land. However, this meeting requires a word of explanation since she died long ago in 1879. In the late 1990s, at the behest […]
By Lucia A. Silecchia In these past few weeks, I — like so many others — saw the winter’s first snowfalls. Since weather is a perennially popular topic for small talk, it did not take long to see that snowfall receives very different receptions from all those on whom it falls. Some welcomed the snowfall as […]
By IHE Graduate Scholar Charles Carman Was it right for Abraham to sacrifice his son? Genesis 22 tells the well-known story of God testing Abraham by telling him to take his beloved son Isaac and offer him up as a sacrifice to the Lord, culminating in the moment when Abraham lifts the knife to slay […]
It happens all year — the requests for donations for all manner of charitable causes.
By Lucia A. Silecchia Every year, as Advent and Christmas approach, I seem to have the same conversation with one of my students. When I ask how the semester is wrapping up, invariably one of my students will tell me how busy they are preparing for final exams, writing course papers, and putting the finishing […]
By IHE Graduate Scholar Jeanne Michelle Datiles All Saints and All Souls: twin feasts that mark the start of November. Perhaps the familiar roll call of ‘apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins’ from the Litany of Loreto pulses in our mind when we think of All Saints. While those ancient categories still stand, they’re given depth, fleshed […]
My team did not make it to the World Series. They got close — very close. Alas, the playoffs did not end well for them. I am not the most devoted fan since I usually do not follow the team’s progress until the excitement of the later part of the season when the stakes are […]
By IHE Graduate Scholar Matthew Advent As debates about Church teaching on the modern economy have become more pronounced on social media, usury has received particular attention. Usury is a serious and complex topic with a rich intellectual history.1 When we examine usury through the lens of later developments within the Thomistic tradition, we can […]
By Lucia A. Silecchia “Raising children is sacred work.” We may expect to hear this in a homily, read it in an encyclical, or learn it from our own parents. Instead, this declaration can be found in the opening pages of a frightening, newly-released U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of […]
By Civitas Dei Alumnus Rupesh Kotte This past June, I had the privilege to attend the 2024 Civitas Dei Fellowship, hosted by the Institute for Human Ecology and the Thomistic Institute. My experience significantly deepened and reshaped my understanding of the moral complexities of just war and the virtues. At first glance, it seemed paradoxical to […]
In recent days, the eyes of sports lovers have been turned toward Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. I have to admit that the Olympics excited me much more when I was younger. When they used to be scheduled every four years, the games seemed rare and special. But, once the summer and winter […]
