Every semester since Spring 2009, the Center has hosted the Bread of Life dinner discussions. The event is designed to provide an opportunity for Notre Dame undergraduates and faculty to meet, reflect on, and discuss their attitudes toward beginning-of-life issues. Bread of Life is especially meant to attract students who might not already be strongly committed to the Church’s teachings on these issues but who are open to exploring them. …
Read More
The Office of Human Dignity & Life Initiatives welcomes Reggie Littlejohn who will screen the documentary, "It's a Girl" onTuesday, April 7 at 2:00pm in the Hesburgh Center Auditorium. Ms. Littlejohn is the founder of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, an international coalition dedicated to opposing forced abortion, gender-selective abortion, and sexual slavery in China. She was also instrumental in the international effort to free blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who arrived in the United States. …
Read More
Join us for our Spring 2015 Arthur J. Schmitt Lecture, "William Harvey and the Circulatory System," to be delivered by Nicholas Maistrellis on Wednesday, April 8, at 4 p.m. in McKenna 100. The lecture will be followed by a reception in the McKenna Atrium.
Nicholas Maistrellis is a tutor at St. John's College. He was a university fellow in the department of History of Science at the University of Wisconsin.…
Read More
Science influences ethics and policy-making. For example, a high incidence of embryo loss in the earliest stage of pregnancy is commonly used as a contributory justification for the intentional or foreseen loss of human embryos in fertility treatment and laboratory experimentation. However, establishing the natural fate of embryos during the first week post-fertilisation is challenging, and hampered by a lack of appropriate data. Many scientific sources are claimed to justify embryo mortality rates of 75% and higher. These include speculative calculations, demographic analyses, biochemical data and the unique anatomical studies of Dr Arthur Hertig. However, a critical re-evaluation of these data casts doubt on quantitative conclusions that are often repeated, and occasionally exaggerated, by both scientists and ethicists. In this talk Dr Gavin Jarvis, a pharmacologist from the University of Cambridge, will introduce and present those studies which provide the evidential basis for claims about early human embryo mortality, and highlight the effects that a misunderstanding of this issue may have on ethics and science alike.…
Read More
Once again this year, the Center is cosponsoring the Thomistic Institute's Philosophy Workshop at Mount Saint Mary's College. This year, the workshop will explore the key principles in Aquinas’ philosophy of nature. How does St. Thomas understand nature and causation? Is his approach compatible with those of the modern sciences? What, for Aquinas, does it mean to understand the particular character of human nature, and how do material realities themselves suggest the necessary existence of immaterial realities (the human soul and God)?…
Read More
Share a drink and a bite with friends old and new! The Center for Ethics and Culture is offering a taste of local fare provided by some of our many wonderful neighborhood businesses.
This event is free and open to the public.
The Center for Ethics and Culture helps promote the flourishing of Notre Dame’s Catholic mission through academic and cultural conferences, lectures, and events on campus. Learn more at ethicscenter.nd.edu.…
Read More
The Notre Dame Vita Institute is an intensive interdisciplinary training program for leaders in the national and international pro-life movement. Through engagement with our premier faculty, interaction with other pro-life leaders, and exposure to award-winning community outreach programs, the Vita Institute aims to further enhance participants’ expertise and prepare them to be more even more effective advocates on behalf of the unborn.…
Read More
In many of the most visible and contested ethical issues of modern societies, the deepest and richest moral commitments of real people and communities are at stake; for example: the meaning of a life well-lived, the nature of the moral order, the appropriate role of government, the appropriate place for tradition and religious beliefs, and the scope and limits of science all derive out of thick metaphysical and moral commitments.…
Read More
Join Center Director Carter Snead and the Notre Dame Club of Orange County for a special Hesburgh Lecture Series presentation on "The Law, Ethics, and Public Policy of Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, and End-of-Life Decision Making" on Thursday, August 13, in Newport Beach, CA.
Given the temporary defeat and likely return of efforts to legalize assisted suicide in California and around the country, it is more important than ever to understand the legal, moral, and ethical issues surrounding the debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide. Professor Snead, an internationally recognized expert in bioethics and end-of-life decision making, will address these complicated issues and lay out the arguments, in principle and prudence, against legalizing assisted suicide.
7-9:30 p.m., Thursday, August 13
O'Donnell Hall, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church
1441 West Balboa Blvd.
Newport Beach, CA 92661
Read More
Thursday, September 17, 4 p.m.
Law School Faculty Meeting Room
Second floor of Eck Hall
Light refreshments provided
Throughout his pontificate, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI spoke to a range of political, civil, academic, and cultural authorities, revealing a striking sensitivity to the fundamental problems of law, justice, and democracy. Collectively, these addresses formulate a series of core ideas for a "public teaching" on the topic of justice and law.
Simoncini, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Florence, will be joined by fellow contributor Paolo Carozza (Notre Dame Law School). Presented by the Center for Ethics and Culture, the Kellogg Institute, the Program on Constitutional Structure, and the Program on Church, State & Society.
Read More
Join us for a lunchtime lecture on
"Solidarity, Pope Saint John Paul II, and the Process of Reconciliation in Poland" by Michal Luczewski.
Monday, September 28
Oak Room, South Dining Hall
11:30 am lunch | 12-1 pm lecture and questions
Read More
Join us for our upcoming Fall Bread of Life Dinner on Tuesday, October 13, 6-8 p.m. in the Oak Room (South Dining Hall, Notre Dame).
Each semester, the Center hosts the Bread of Life Dinner to give students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to gather outside the classroom for informal conversation about the life issues. Jessica Keating, the director of the Office of Human Dignity and Life Initiatives, will give a short talk on "Radical Hospitality in a Throw-Away Culture," followed by time for discussion and questions.
Read More
Call for Papers
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” —Goethe
The University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture is pleased to announce its sixteenth annual Fall Conference, "For Freedom Set Free," to be held November 19–21, 2015.
In our customary interdisciplinary fashion, this conference will take up a host of questions related to the nature, significance, and various dimensions of freedom, pursued in the context of philosophy, theology, political theory, law, history, economics, the social sciences, the biosciences, literature, and the arts. We welcome the submission of abstracts drawing on a wide range of moral and religious perspectives and academic specialties. …
Read More
The Center for Ethics and Culture invites the Notre Dame community to a special forum on the recent terrorist attacks in France, featuring three Paris-based scholars of European political thought.
Read More
Join the Center for Ethics and Culture for the Fall 2015 Schmitt Lecture, "The Freedom of the Physical World: Taking Quantum Mechanics Seriously," with Craig S. Lent, Freimann Professor of Engineering at Notre Dame.
The lecture will be immediately followed by dinner in the McKenna Lower Level dining area. The lecture is free and open to the public; please RSVP for the dinner to Laura Nash by Monday, November 30.
Read More
