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Morality in Practice

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

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June 2016

June 20, 2016

The Tony-Winning Guide To Temptation And Grace

Last Sunday, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton won 11 well-deserved Tony Awards, and, last week, I wrote an...

May 2016

May 02, 2016

Hedgehogs of Redemption and the Comedy of Grace

One of my friends has been coordinating a series of Narnia book clubs, and, prompted...

April 2016

April 27, 2016

Mercy, Justice, and How To Tell The Difference

I haven't blogged at all about Pope Francis's Apostolic exortation Amoris Laetitia, for the simple...

February 2016

February 22, 2016

Pinning down *which* error is made in this adultery advice

I love reading Mallory Ortberg at The Toast, and, while I was reading through her...

January 2016

January 28, 2016

Unfiltered isn’t the Same as Authentic

Given my love of the anti-entropic call to arms of Diane Duane's So You Want to...

January 12, 2016

Using Goodhart’s Law to Find Happiness

My parish kicked off its Adult Sunday School (taught by Dominican friars) this past week...

October 2015

October 28, 2015

The People I Don’t Learn to Love

After reading my essay on "Both/And Philanthropy," one of my friends told me that there...

October 26, 2015

Building a Both/And Philanthropy

Over at Fare Forward, I'm doing a paired review of Jeremy Beer's The Philanthropic Revolution: An...

October 15, 2015

How Do You Lance A Festering Resentment?

I'm curious what readers (religious or not) wind up doing when you're frustrated by/or angry...

September 2015

September 22, 2015

Ridiculously Over-Engineered Approaches To Empathy

When I was complaining about a plane delay on facebook, a friend of mine generously...

September 10, 2015

Gateway Drugs to More Ethical Lives

A while ago, I mentioned that I'd found [X]-adjacent to be a helpful category when...

August 2015

August 13, 2015

Is “Kindness-Adjacent” A Useful Category?

Catherine Addington wrote a great piece on police brutality for AmCon (that happened to riff on one...

August 12, 2015

Positive Parenting and Pick Up Artistry

Libby Anne of the Patheos Atheist channel is one of my favorite people to read...

April 2015

April 29, 2015

Does Effective Altruism Dehumanize People You Give To?

I'm discussing Effective Altruism and (possibly!) defusing some concerns about this growing, evidence-based movement in...

March 2015

March 22, 2015

Some Tools for Failing to Live Perfectly Well

Richard Beck of Experimental Theology had an interesting post up recently about purity and anxiety...

March 14, 2015

Terry Pratchett’s Morals and Magic [Radio Readings]

You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and...

March 05, 2015

Effective Altruism & Ethically Questionable Cookies

Earlier this week, I linked to the Yale Effective Altruists' writeup of my visit (my...

February 2015

February 21, 2015

Effective Altruism and Caritas [Radio Readings]

You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and...

February 12, 2015

Why Make People Derive the Rules for Sex Themselves?

I'll be sending the monthly update on my book Arriving At Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that...

February 11, 2015

Ethical Sex: Paying attention to the consequences of “No”

A friend of mine shared an excellent essay with me on ways to understand consent....

February 02, 2015

A Fired-Up, Fusty Witness to Christian Faith [Saints Bookclub]

In 2015, I'm reading and blogging through Ronald Knox's collection of sermons on Christian exemplars, Captive Flames:...

January 2015

January 20, 2015

Holy Fools Against the Mini-Maxers

My friend Ilana Yurkiewicz is an excellent doctoring blogger, and I particularly appreciated one of her recent essays,...

January 06, 2015

Ethical Edge Cases So Sharp You’ll Cut Yourself

I've run into three considerations of hypotheticals (two of them in the last week) that...

December 2014

December 10, 2014

Trapped by Torture in Enmity with the World

Reading over more details about the Torture Report, I was reminded of a passage I'd...

December 09, 2014

Torture Report Details Wounds to Prisoners and Guards

The torture report (well, the unclassified executive summary) came out today, and the news is...

October 2014

October 30, 2014

Welcoming Depression into the Church [Guest Post]

This is a guest post by Christian H of The Thinking Grounds, and is appearing...

October 29, 2014

Saying Hello Under the Shadow of Street Harrassment

This post is part of a symposium on Loving Parishioners in their Particularity -- discussing how the church community...

October 27, 2014

Loving Parishioners in their Particularity [Symposium Index]

Kat Fernandez of The Crescat wrote recently about the experience of feeling ignored by the...

October 22, 2014

Avoiding Rape-Adjacent Sex

I've seen a bunch of pieces about California's proposed Yes-Means-Yes law (which only applies to public college...

October 16, 2014

Gradualism in the Gym and the Bedroom

A number of responses written to the recent Synod have been focused on the merits...