“Spirituals and Temporals”

While Orestes Brownson’s works are the object of renewed interest, his writings on the relationship between Church and polity have received little notice. Some attention has been given to Brownson’s analysis of these issues in America, but little has been given to his views on Church and polity in Europe and the West more broadly. This article considers Brownson’s analysis of the history of Church-state relations in Europe to examine how it shaped his view of Church-state relations in the U.S. It then put Brownson in dialogue with subsequent Catholic debates in America about those relations down to the present.

Types of Stem Cells Used in US-Based Clinical Trials between 1999 and 2014

This study looks at the number of clinical trials involving specific stem cell types. To our knowledge, this has never been done before. Stem cell clinical trials that were conducted at locations in the US and registered on the National Institutes of Health database at ‘clinicaltrials.gov’ were categorized according to the type of stem cell used (adult, cancer, embryonic, perinatal, or induced pluripotent) and the year that the trial was registered. From 1999 to 2014, there were 2,357 US stem cell clinical trials registered on ‘clinicaltrials.gov,’ and 89 percent were from adult stem cells and only 0.12 percent were from embryonic stem cells. This study concludes that embryonic stem cells should no longer be used for clinical study because of their irrelevance, moral questions, and induced pluripotent stem cells.

Civil Divorce and the Catholic Lawyer

This article answers common moral questions on civil divorce and legal practice relevant to faithful Catholics in the legal field, such as whether a Catholic lawyer may be morally involved in civil divorce litigation and, if so, to what extent, in light of basic Catholic moral principles on marriage and civil divorce. It addresses moral dilemmas that Catholic legal practitioners, judges and law students may face in employment situations and divorce-related legal services. In addition, the article addresses civil divorce alternatives like reconciliation, declaration of marriage nullity and legal separation.

Reilly and the Republic in 2020

Robert Reilly’s America on Trial presents a lengthy defense of the principles of the American Founding against recent critiques, especially focusing on those written from a Catholic perspective. His book finds a place in a larger discussion of American Catholic political thought that has been going on for more than a century. I first situate Reilly’s book within that debate, and then argue that Reilly’s account is correct on most counts. Some loose ends remain, but they can be dealt with by expanding some of the points that Reilly has already made. I think, though, that other points not even raised by Reilly’s critics will require further reflection by future American Catholic political thinkers. In 2020, the sensus communis in America has ceased to be “cool and deliberate,” a desideratum for the regime mentioned in Federalist 63; we need to figure out ways to make it cool again.

McCarrick, the Kingmaker?

The former Cardinal McCarrick was often dubbed as the “Kingmaker” for his power to influence episcopal promotion in the United States and even in the Vatican. However, most of the information to support this argument is often lacking in context, making the claim easy to downplay. The purpose of this study is to look at one of the networks of Catholic bishops in the United States and to provide empirical evidence of McCarrick as the “Kingmaker” using social network analysis. The result of this study supports the claim that McCarrick was indeed the “Kingmaker” in his appointments of his former subordinates.