Moral Issues
Shedding light on the critical moral problems of our time
by Jeffrey A. Mirus Ph.D.
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Book Description
The thirty-six essays collected here are the most compelling and enduringly useful of over one hundred moral essays by Dr. Jeffrey Mirus published on CatholicCulture.org between 2004 and 2011. In addition to four introductory and closing essays on moral theory and moral witness, they cover—in alphabetical order—such issues as abortion, animal rights, biomedical issues, capital punishment, contraception, environmentalism, health care, homosexuality, lying, marriage and gay marriage, the objectification of women and pornography, suicide and war. In these essays, Mirus sometimes establishes the simple right or wrong of a particular moral question, and at other times he explores important related issues, side effects and repercussions. The various issues cannot be separated completely, both because all moral issues are intrinsically related and because the predispositions, strengths and weaknesses of a particular culture cause that culture to deal with all moral issues in similar ways. Taken together, these essays open an important window on the moral landscape of the Western world in the twenty-first century after Christ.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Relativism and the Rights of Man
- The Consequences of . . . Consequentialism
- The Women Who Have Abortions, and the Love They Need
- Abortion and the Isolation of Women
- God and Mammon: Catholic Support for Abortion
- Contraception: Why It's Wrong
- Plan B and the Case of Rape
- Contraception and the Catholic Vision
- The Pope, the Condom, and the Elephant
- Saving Women Through Cosmetic Surgery
- Homosexuality: 1. The Disorder Question
- Homosexuality: 2. The Truth Question
- Homosexuality: A Special Call to the Love of God and Man
- Marriage: The Forgotten Vocation
- Gay Marriage and the Next Gulag
- Why Gay Marriage Is Straight Business
- The War Against Pornography
- On Humanitarianism and Animal Rights
- The Problem of Animal Rights
- Don’t Kill Those Who Can Feel Pain
- Principles of Catholic Environmentalism
- The Green Pope’s Dilemma
- The Bishops, Justice, Health Care and Social Change
- A Barren Beach
- Concern for the Poor in Health Care
- The Challenge of Bio-Medical Advances
- Is It Ever Right to Lie?
- Readers on Lying
- Capital Punishment: Drawing the Line Between Doctrine and Opinion
- Opposition to the Death Penalty
- Going to War: The Citizen, the State, and Ambiguity
- Respecting the Right to Choose Death
- The Rights and Laws of Suicide
- Conscience: Its Strengths and Limits
- What This Means: Christian Witness in the Modern World