This article evaluates the sociological aspects of saving sex for marriage. Promiscuity is linked to high rates of sexually transmitted infections, abortion, and high rates of divorce, which has multiple negative consequences on children. Single motherhood and cohabitation are also associated with negative consequences for children including lower emotional well-being, emotional problems, poorer physical health, and poorer academic achievement. Cohabitation, which is becoming increasingly common either before marriage or without marriage, is associated with a higher frequency of intimate partner violence (including severe violence, sexual violence, and emotional violence) and substance abuse. In contrast, saving sex for marriage is associated with lower divorce rates and consequently higher emotional, behavioral, social, health, and academic outcomes of children from “intact” households. Compared with cohabitation, marriage is associated with higher relationship satisfaction, relationship dedication, relationship confidence, sexual satisfaction, and friendship, and with lower negative communication. These observations support Church teaching on sexual behavior.
Recent federal court cases involving termination of employees who were denied a religious exemption to refuse COVID-19 vaccination mandated by employers renewed the discussion of the morality of using medicines produced and/or tested in cell lines derived from elective abortions. A common argument of employers in these lawsuits was that the association of COVID-19 vaccines and certain over-the-counter (OTC) medicines with past abortions was equivalent. Therefore, the use of OTC medicines but refusal of COVID-19 vaccines represented a contradiction to a sincerely held religious belief. In this commentary, we demonstrate that the association of COVID-19 vaccines and certain OTC drugs (aspirin, ibuprofen, Benadryl, and Claritin) with past abortions is not equivalent. We outline the Catholic church's position on the use of medicines with an association with elective abortions and demonstrate how Catholic doctrine supports religious-exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates citing a tenet of the faith, respect for all human life.
Background Reports in the medical literature indicate that there are patients who have initiated medical abortions by taking mifepristone but not misoprostol and have attempted to continue their pregnancies by taking exogenous progesterone. Objective We sought to evaluate the effectiveness and adverse events of exogenous progesterone taken after mifepristone. Methods This is a retrospective cohort of consecutive patients who contacted a nonprofit hotline from October 13, 2021 to January 5, 2024. The primary outcome was the rate of continuing pregnancy two weeks after progesterone initiation; secondary outcomes included demographics, progesterone dose and route of administration, and adverse events. A small subset was evaluated for a secondary outcome of gestational age at delivery. Data from a small subset were evaluated for preterm birth and birth defects. Adverse events at two weeks were analyzed. Patients were included if they wanted to attempt to continue their pregnancies after taking mifepristone for medical abortion. Exclusion criteria included never starting progesterone therapy, initiating progesterone more than 72 h after ingesting mifepristone, gestational age at the time of mifepristone ingestion greater than 11 weeks 6 days or undocumented, and surgical or additional medical termination of pregnancy. Results From 1,466 patients screened, 765 met the inclusion criterion and did not meet exclusion criteria; 418 (55%) had confirmed continuing pregnancies two weeks postinitiation of progesterone therapy. Earlier gestational age at mifepristone use was associated with a decreased likelihood of continuing pregnancy at two weeks (39% vs. 58%, p < .001). Significant bleeding was reported by 0.3% of the patients; 3% visited the emergency department; and hospitalizations occurred in 0.5% of the cases. There were no blood transfusions nor maternal mortalities. Conclusions Continuing pregnancy was noted in 55%, superior to the 25% rate documented in the literature for mifepristone alone without intervention. There were a few adverse events associated with progesterone use. These retrospective data suggest the potential benefit of exogenous progesterone administration for patients seeking to continue their pregnancies after taking mifepristone but not misoprostol. Further research, including randomized controlled trials, is needed
This article canvases several sexually transmitted infections (STIs). It explains in detail their prevalence, how they are contracted, and their sequelae. The article closes by arguing that engaging in promiscuous sexual activity is a violation of justice. The advance the article makes is that typical arguments against promiscuous sexual activity focus on some aspect of the Church's sexual teachings. It is an underexplored terrain to develop an argument against such behavioral patterns from the standpoint of justice, insofar as appeals to justice are more ecumenical.
Although few would question the historical role of Christianity in establishing charitable institutions, such as public hospitals, many seem to question its importance in the present time. This essay examines why public hospitals may have failed to emerge under pre-Christian frameworks. I will investigate how (1) Stoicism, (2) Ancient Greco-Roman paganism, and (3) Aristotelian virtue ethics define and limit the principles, respectively, of (1) camaraderie of humanity, (2) honor-motivated generosity, and (3) pursuit of generosity as a virtue. It will be shown that the logical implications that allow each foundational worldview to derive its principle also limit that principle's role in establishing charities. Afterward, I will introduce the Christian framework and demonstrate how the concept that every human possesses the Imago Dei can successfully ground the establishment of charitable work. Since Christian virtue ethics built upon Aristotle's, direct comparisons will be made with Aristotle's ethical system. Whereas Aristotle was arguably unclear about the highest virtue, Christianity's highest virtue is a loving union with God (charity). Since a virtue is that which disposes one toward happiness, and since God is the ultimate Happiness, there can be no true happiness without the virtue of charity. But since each fellow human is an Image of God, there is no true happiness without practicing charity toward one's neighbor by coming to their aid. The corporal works of mercy can therefore be deeply grounded in the concept of the Imago Dei, with an added call to be Christ-like, where those with more ought to supply those with less. In the conclusion, I briefly discuss a larger pattern: not only do charitable works require a sound motivating principle, but that principle also requires an adequate foundational worldview.
Modern surgical culture often reduces time to a quantifiable metric that must be optimized, managed, and monetized. Surgeons are evaluated by operative speed, documentation efficiency, and productivity benchmarks, producing a professional identity that equates professional worth with output. This theological reflection advances the Sabbath as a counter-narrative to the utilitarian temporality that dominates contemporary surgical practice. Proceeding through an interreligious theological lens, the paper engages Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat) theology on its own terms while placing it in moral dialogue with Protestant and Catholic moral theology. It carefully distinguishes Jewish Sabbath observance from the Christian Lord's Day, resisting any conflation of the two, while exploring their shared witness to time as sacred rather than merely instrumental. Drawing on scriptural interpretation, classical theological sources, and narrative examples from clinical training and practice, the paper examines four interrelated dimensions of the Sabbath: as holy, which consecrates creation and establishes rest as sacred; as Kairos, which reframes chronological time as divinely imbued time; as counter-formation, which resists the moral deformation produced by unrestrained productivity; and as application through concrete practices of rest. Building on these theological foundations, the paper develops a five-part rhythm of Sabbath practice-prepare, pause, presence, play, and pray-as a framework for moral formation that is both personal and communal. Sabbath practice is presented not as withdrawal from vocation but as moral reordering, reorienting surgical labor toward human dignity, trust, and relational presence. While the invitation of Sabbath extends to all healthcare workers, the analysis focuses particularly on surgeons, whose training and professional culture render questions of time, control, and endurance especially acute. Ultimately, to be shaped by the Sabbath is to resist becoming an instrument of efficiency alone and instead to be formed as a healer whose work unfolds within holy time.
Social determinants of health (SDH) such as income, housing, education, and access to care are widely acknowledged as critical drivers of population health. However, they do not arise independently or randomly; instead, they are shaped by upstream societal decisions, institutional priorities, and ethical commitments, which Berwick has termed moral determinants of health (MDH). The central thesis of this essay is that faith (articulated through Christian doctrine and Catholic social teaching) operates independently as a robust moral determinant of health. Historical evidence demonstrates that faith is a catalytic force that motivates structural change, sustains long-term commitment to justice, and mobilizes resources to transform the social conditions in which health and disease emerge. Faith-inspired institutions deliver significant portions of all global healthcare, advocate for policies that prioritize people experiencing poverty, and address the root causes of inequity. When guided by the Holy Spirit, such actions become not merely social work but a visible manifestation of the Kingdom of God. Recognizing faith as one of the MDH reframes public health as a moral project and calls for policies that integrate faith-based motivations and institutions into health systems. In this way, addressing SDH becomes both a public health imperative and a theological mission.
Self-inflicted cutting, a common form of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), has emerged as a significant clinical and pastoral concern in contemporary psychiatry. Clinically, cutting serves multiple psychological functions: regulation of intense affect, relief of overwhelming distress, externalization of emotional pain, self-punishment, indirect communication of suffering, induction of dissociative states, or generation of physiological arousal. These functions underscore the complexity of the behavior. From a Catholic theological perspective, these psychological mechanisms may be situated within a broader account of the human person. Catholic anthropology holds that the human being, created in the image of God (imago Dei), is ordered towards communion with God and others. Flowing from this orientation is a capacity for self-gift, by which suffering may be united to Christ's once-for-all redemptive sacrifice. Suffering is not salvific in itself; it becomes spiritually fruitful only insofar as it participates in Christ's redemptive act, sacramentally mediated through the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Cutting can therefore be interpreted as a tragic misdirection of the human longing for communion and restoration. Pain, severed from relational participation in Christ's sacrifice, turns inward and becomes destructive rather than transformative. This essay examines cutting through an interdisciplinary lens integrating psychiatry, biblical theology, Catholic anthropology, and medical history to argue that authentic healing requires both rigorous psychiatric care and pastoral accompaniment that reorients suffering toward communion. Short Summary:Cutting is examined through psychiatry and Catholic theology as a misdirected attempt to relieve suffering.
Can Catholics ethically use GLP-1 agonists to pursue the goal of weight loss? I argue that the goal of maintaining a healthy weight should serve the further ends of caring for the good gift of one's own body and pursuing the virtuous beatitude which befits the human person. Drawing from Thomas Aquinas, I argue that temperance is an integral part of human flourishing. I apply the work of other Catholic ethicists on analogous behavior-modifying drugs to consider whether GLP-1 agonists facilitate or thwart the development of temperance. I conclude that the drug may contribute to insensibility (the opposite of temperance) and undermine the moral agent's development of a Eucharistic disposition toward the gift of food. Finally, I argue that GLP-1 agonists must not be regarded as a fix-all solution when the greatest share of America's obesity crisis is borne by the poor and marginalized. Rather, Catholics must recognize and reform underlying unjust socioeconomic structures, such as food deserts, and the American culture of food consumerism, which make it more difficult for disadvantaged communities to exercise responsible stewardship of their bodies.
The seventh edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services states, "In principle, there is an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration for those who cannot take food orally." Most of the discussions around medically assisted nutrition and hydration have focused on enteral nutrition. The present article aims to argue that the obligation to provide nutrition and hydration, in principle, extends to providing parenteral nutrition for patients who cannot take in food through their intestines so long as the intervention does not constitute a grave burden, does not entail excessive expense, and provides a reasonable hope of efficacy. There are several medical conditions in which either short- or long-term total parenteral nutrition (TPN) is required and is accepted as the standard of care. The inability to tolerate nutrition enterally should not be either a death sentence or a condonation of passive euthanasia via dehydration and starvation if death is not imminent. Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, in discussing death and feeding tubes stated that, "Our death, in other words, should result from the progress of a pathological condition, not from a lack of food or water if it could have been readily and effectively offered to provide comfort and support to a patient." Proceeding with TPN is a proportionate method of assisted nutrition and hydration that has the potential to aid in the prolongation of life worth living, as well as preventing unnecessary death via dehydration and starvation.
This essay examines the theological and vocational implications of a physician's experience of serious illness through the lens of Catholic anthropology and sacramental theology. When a practicing transplant surgeon unexpectedly underwent emergency open heart surgery for acute aortic dissection, the transition from healer to patient precipitated an existential reorientation. Drawing upon St. Augustine's understanding of human dependence upon grace, the Catechism's teaching on divine sustenance, and St. John Paul II's theology of redemptive suffering in Salvifici Doloris, this reflection explores how acute vulnerability disrupts professional identity while deepening it. Two devotional texts-Lead Me, Lord and Anima Christi-serve as interpretive anchors, illuminating the movement from disorientation to surrender and from autonomy to dependent agency. The essay argues that serious illness can purify and reform medical vocation by exposing the illusion of mastery and situating clinical practice within the primacy of grace. Rather than erasing professional identity, the experience of suffering may configure the physician more deeply to Christ and foster a more integrated understanding of healing as cooperation with divine providence. In this convergence of medicine and theology, vulnerability becomes not a negation of vocation but its refinement.
Contemporary bioethics treats autonomy as the governing principle in decisions involving euthanasia, abortion, and end-of-life care. Yet the operative moral reasoning in these debates frequently depends not on autonomy but on implicit judgments about the value of human life based on functional capacity, suffering, or perceived quality of life. This paper identifies and analyzes this conceptual inconsistency. It argues that functional valuations of life, not autonomy, are doing the decisive moral work in contemporary clinical ethics, and that this hidden reliance on conditional assessments of human worth creates an unstable foundation for protecting vulnerable persons. Drawing on the Christian theological tradition, particularly the doctrine of the imago Dei, Augustinian and Thomistic moral anthropology, and the work of Edmund D. Pellegrino, the paper proposes an alternative framework in which human dignity is intrinsic and inviolable, and autonomy is understood not as sovereign self-determination, but as responsible moral stewardship exercised within the created order. Three case studies in euthanasia, abortion, and advance care planning illustrate the practical consequences of this reorientation. The paper concludes with implications for clinical ethics consultation, institutional policy, and the role of Christian bioethics in pluralistic healthcare discourse.
We set out brief answers to the key questions raised by transgender ideology. We defend the position that sex is objective, biologically grounded, and binary. We explain why altering the body to appear to conform with one's mistaken subjective sense of sex/gender is contrary to health and objectively immoral. We defend the position that every person morally ought to acknowledge and accept his or her genuine sexual identity, and briefly mention the importance of not identifying sex with secondary sexual characteristics.
