The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame will present the 2021 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to Vicki Thorn, founder of the post-abortion healing ministry Project Rachel and executive director of the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, at a celebration on April 24.

“Vicki Thorn’s work is a living witness to the unconditional love and mercy that lies at the heart of the Culture of Life,” said O. Carter Snead, the director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. “We originally wanted to honor Vicki this past April at a gala celebration gathered with hundreds of friends and champions of life, but the pandemic and associated safety protocols necessitated a postponement. We look forward to presenting her with the Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal in 2021.”

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Inspired by Pope Francis's observation that Christians "cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life," the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture will host a webinar discussion on racism and the culture of life on July 28 at 8:00 p.m. (EDT). The discussion is co-hosted by the College of Arts and Letters…

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It is with a heavy heart that the de Nicola Center announces the cancellation of our 2020 Fall Conference, originally scheduled to take place November 12–14 at the University of Notre Dame.

In light of the ongoing pandemic, the University has taken a number of precautions…

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The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture will present the 2020 Notre Dame Vita Institute, its annual intellectual formation program for pro-life leaders, as a series of five free webinars the week of June 15–19, 2020.

The Center's annual Vita Institute brings together leaders in the national and international pro-life movement for a week each summer at Notre Dame for an intensive interdisciplinary training program that extends and deepens their breadth and depth of understanding of the subjects most essential to building a culture of life, including biology, philosophy, law, theology, and social sciences. This year’s online webinar series will allow a wider audience to sample the exceptional teaching of the traditional on-campus event.…

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The following essay was shared with the Notre Dame Law School faculty by G. Marcus Cole, the Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law. We are proud to publish it with his permission:

I am George Floyd. Except, I can breathe. And I can do something.
– G. Marcus Cole

Over the past several days, I have received numerous messages of care and support from friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, each of whom simply wanted to express their concern for how I might be feeling in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. For many, I am perhaps one of the only African-American men in their social or business circles. Others, especially those who know me well, are cognizant of my own personal experiences with racial violence. Their expressions of love and support are rooted in the fact that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are strikingly similar to my own accounts of an attack on my father over fifty years ago, one I witnessed as a little boy. What my friends may not know, but surely suspect, is that each report of racial violence at the hands of a police officer or group of men brings to the surface the vivid memories of that terrible night.

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The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture salutes the more than 100 student Sorin Fellows who completed their studies at Notre Dame, Saint Mary's College, and Holy Cross College in 2020. In all, 75 undergraduates and 28 graduate and professional school Sorin Fellows joined their classmates in virtual commencement ceremonies earlier this month.…

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On January 24, more than 800 students, faculty, staff, and graduate students from the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College, and St. Mary’s College will participate in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., now in its 47th year. Thanks to generous underwriting by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, in partnership with the Notre Dame Right to Life student club, the university consistently sends one of the largest single contingents to participate in the event, year after year.…

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Sir Roger Scruton by Pete Helme

The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture mourns the death of philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, who died of complications of cancer on January 12, 2020. Sir Roger was one of the foremost contemporary writers on aesthetics and political philosophy, penning works on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, conservativism, and religion; he also wrote novels, two operas, and a television series entitled Why Beauty Matters…

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In 2019, the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture celebrated its twentieth year of sharing the richness of the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition both on campus and in the public square. It was truly a banner year, beginning with the announcement on January 8 that Tony and Christie de Nicola had made a transformative gift of $10 million to endow the dCEC's work…

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The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture is pleased to announce the recipient of the Polking Family Fellowship for the 2019–20 academic year. Michael Bradley, who earned his Bachelor of Arts and a subsequent Master's in Theological Studies at Notre Dame, has returned to campus to begin studies at Notre Dame Law School, joining existing Polking Fellows Hope Steffensen (3L) and Aly Cox (2L).…

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In the Queen's Birthday Honours announced on June 10, 2019, John M. Finnis, a Permanent Senior Distinguished Research Fellow of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and the Biolchini Family Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, was appointed as a Companion [AC] of the Order of Australia. The honor was granted with the citation…

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The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture is pleased to invite abstract submissions for its 20th annual Fall Conference, November 7–9, 2019. This year's conference will explore the theme of friendship, from its ancient understanding as "the crown of life and the school of virtue" (C.S. Lewis) to the present day. What does it mean to make the good of another one's own, and what might be the implications of losing such an understanding of friendship in the modern world?…

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The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame is cohosting a pair of colloquia in Paris to take place May 27–29, 2019, at the Law School of the Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité and the Centre d’études du Saulchoir. The conferences are part of an ongoing research collaboration on politics and Christianity, under the theme of “The Two Cities,” sponsored by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, the Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité, and the Centre d’études du Saulchoir.…

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The University of Notre Dame de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture presented the 2019 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to the Women’s Care Center, the largest network of pregnancy resource centers in the United States, at a Mass and dinner attended by more than 600 guests and friends on April 27, 2019. The celebration can be viewed on the Center's YouTube channel here…

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His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, was the principal celebrant and homilist at the dedication Mass for the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of the University of Notre Dame on April 26, 2019.

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The University of Notre Dame de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture will present the 2019 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to the Women’s Care Center Foundation at a Mass and banquet on April 27. The medal presentation was live-streamed on the Center's YouTube channel. The Evangelium Vitae…

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O. Carter Snead, the William P. and Hazel B. White Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, will present the 16th Annual John Collins Harvey Lecture, hosted by the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University on April 25, 2019. His talk is entitled "Remembering the Body: Towards a More Human Public Bioethics," based on the themes of his book manuscript by the same name (under contract with Harvard University Press).…

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Established in 1999, the Center for Ethics and Culture has long been part of the University of Notre Dame’s wider efforts to share the richness of the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition through teaching, research and dialogue, both on campus and in the wider public square.…

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O. Carter Snead, director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, was quoted in an Associated Press article…

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The Center for Ethics and Culture will award the 2019 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal — an award for heroes of the pro-life movement — to the Women’s Care Center Foundation.

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The Center for Ethics and Culture mourns the death of philosopher H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., professor of the history and philosophy of medicine at Rice University and professor emeritus at Baylor College of Medicine, who passed away on June 21, 2018 in Houston. Engelhardt was recognized as one of the pioneers of the field of bioethics, writing more than 300 books, chapters, and articles that examined personhood and identity, bioethics, genetics, secular humanism, the deprofessionalization of medicine, Christian theology and ethics, animal rights, health policy, and much more. His seminal 1986 book Foundations of Bioethics…

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O. Carter Snead, the William P. and Hazel B. White Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, has been elected as a Fellow of the Hastings Center, the world's first and most prestigious bioethics research institute. The Hastings Center draws their Fellows from across the disciplines and hails them as "an elected group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, life sciences research and the environment." Their Fellows display "uncommon insight and impact in areas of critical concern to the Center – how best to understand and manage the inevitable values questions, moral uncertainties and societal effects that arise as a consequence of advances in the life sciences, the need to improve health and health care for people of all ages, and mitigation of human impact on the natural world."…

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This May, more than 50 participants in the Center for Ethics and Culture's Sorin Fellows student formation program will graduate as part of the Class of 2018 from the University of Notre Dame. Established in 2014 and named in honor of Notre Dame’s founder, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., as part of the university’s bicentennial celebration of his birth, the Sorin Fellows program provides students with opportunities to build lasting relationships with other fellows and Notre Dame faculty; participate actively in the intellectual life and programming offered by the Center; and gain access to a wide range of unique opportunities including leadership development, professional and career mentorship, and funding for internships and research projects with partner organizations around the world.…

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The Center for Ethics and Culture presented the Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to Harvard Law School professor and former US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon at a Mass and banquet on April 28, 2018.…

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In a piece entitled "The Alfie Evans case is straight out of a dystopia," CEC Director O. Carter Snead wrote,

Little Alfie Evans has recently passed away, but the struggle over his treatment provoked a worldwide conflict over parental rights, how to care properly for the seriously disabled, and the appropriate role of the state in such intimate and vexed matters. What it revealed is that the law of the UK is in desperate need of revision to make room for the profoundly disabled and their loved ones who wish to care for them, despite the judgment of others that such lives of radical dependence and frailty are not worth living.

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In an Irish Times op-ed responding to an earlier letter claiming that many American states "have very conservative abortion laws," CEC Director O. Carter Snead corrected the record to reflect that American abortion law is "among the most permissive in the world." Professor Snead wrote,…

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Center for Ethics and Culture Public Policy Fellow Mary O'Callaghan will be a featured speaker at a panel discussion about Down Syndrome hosted by the Holy See's Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations on March 20. "No Room in Rural Villages, Cities, & Homes for Those with Disabilities? Are Girls & Boys with Down Syndrome Being Left Behind?" will take place at the UN Headquarters in New York City the day before World Down Syndrome Day, 3/21, referring to the Trisomy 21 genetic marker that causes Down Syndrome as discovered by geneticist Dr. Jérôme Lejeune.…

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The Center for Ethics and Culture mourns the death of philosopher Germain Gabriel Grisez, professor emeritus of Mount Saint Mary's University, who passed away on February 1, 2018 following a battle with cancer. Grisez, one of the twentieth century's most influential Catholic moral philosophers and co-founder of the "New Natural Law Theory," is best known for his masterwork The Way of the Lord Jesus…

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As the United States observes the 45th anniversary of the Supreme Court's tragic and misguided decision to deny unborn children the equal protection of the law, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the university's primary locus of pro-life research, teaching, and public engagement, has stepped up its efforts to proclaim the countercultural message that all human life is sacred and entitled to respect and protection.…

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On January 19, the Center partnered with the Notre Dame Right to Life student club to send 1,034 students and nearly 100 faculty and staff to the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. Center Director O. Carter Snead gave an interview from the National Mall during the EWTN broadcast…

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