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.…
O. Carter Snead, director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, was quoted in an Associated Press article…
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.
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…
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."…
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.…
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.…
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,…
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.…
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…
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.…
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…
On January 6, the Center partnered with Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, to present a condensed version of the Notre Dame Vita Institute, its elite pro-life training program. More than 175 guests registered to take part in the one-day workshop to explore the most pressing life issues with the CEC's world-premier scholars in biology, philosophy, theology, and law. In his remarks at the conference, Cardinal Dolan praised the work of the CEC…
As 2017 draws to a close, the director and staff of the Center for Ethics and Culture would like to extend a sincere "Thank you!" to the many benefactors and friends who have helped us further our mission to promote the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition both on the Notre Dame campus and in the wider public square.…
O. Carter Snead, the William P. and Hazel B. White Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture, issued the following statement addressing questions related to John Waters's presentation at the Center's 18th Annual Fall Conference:
The history of the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam is a source of great pain for many people both in Ireland and throughout the world. We recognize and share that pain.…
More than 750 scholars and guests are gathering at the University of Notre Dame for the Center for Ethics and Culture’s 18th annual interdisciplinary Fall Conference, “Through Every Human Heart,” November 9–11. The conference features 112 presentations that consider the perennial problem of good and evil in our world, including the Thursday keynote lecture “Is the God of the Old Testament Evil?” by Gary Anderson, the Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology at Notre Dame, and Saturday's closing keynote presentation by Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University, "Machiavelli on Necessary Evil." Additional keynote speakers include Jacqueline Rivers of Harvard University, the University of Chicago's Jonathan Lear, Bishop Godfrey Onah of Nsukka, Nigeria, James Hankins of Harvard University, and the Center for Ethics and Culture Senior Distinguished Research Fellow Alasdair MacIntyre.…
Carter Snead, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture and professor of law, has been re-appointed as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope’s principal advisory group on life issues and bioethics.
The Center for Ethics and Culture welcomes two new staffers to the CEC this week. Petra Farrell and Pete Hlabse join the team to oversee and further develop the student formation and culture of life programming at the CEC.
Petra Farrell comes to the CEC as the Culture of Life Program Manager, having served for several years as a volunteer with St. Joseph County Right to Life…
The University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture will award the 2018 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to former U.S. ambassador and Harvard professor of law Mary Ann Glendon at a Mass and banquet on April 28, 2018.…
The Center for Ethics and Culture launched a bi-weekly podcast series, Ethics and Culture Cast, featuring lively conversations with professors, fellows, and friends of the Center. Hosted by the CEC's communications specialist Ken Hallenius, episodes release every other Thursday throughout the academic year.…
Laura Nash, Center for Ethics and Culture Event Planning Program Manager, has been promoted to Associate Director for Operations. In the newly created position, she will oversee the Center's day-to-day operations and finances, execute strategic planning, oversee the staff, and ensure Center initiatives operate at the highest-level. Laura will work with Director, Carter Snead, and Center staff to implement the mission and vision of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture to share the richness of the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition through teaching, research, and public engagement across a variety of disciplines.…
Current and future pro-life advocates and leaders from around the world gathered on the campus of the University of Notre Dame for a week-long "pro-life boot camp" at the Center for Ethics and Culture's annual Notre Dame Vita Institute, June 9-17, 2017. Participants studied the fundamentals of life issues with leading scholars across a wide range of disciplines including social science, biology, philosophy, theology, law, neonatology, and reproductive health.…
From May 31–June 2, Carter Snead, director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, participated in an exclusive meeting of the directors of the leading US university centers and institutes whose work focuses on Catholic Social Thought. The convocation was hosted at Georgetown University and featured invited representatives from 30 of the leading Catholic institutions of higher learning in the United States, with the goal of establishing a closer collaboration among the Vatican and premier Catholic educational institutions in order to "deepen the social doctrine of the Church and attempt to make it widely known and applied."…
The Center for Ethics and Culture mourns the death of Peter Augustine Lawler of Berry College, who passed away on May 23, 2017. Lawler had been a frequent speaker and guest at Notre Dame events over the years, most recently in March 2016 when he presented on Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book…
The Center for Ethics and Culture is proud to salute the Sorin Fellows of the Class of 2017! Through their affiliation with the Center, these students have had the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition and examine the many ways they can be brought to bear on pressing ethical issues in culture and public policy today. As they graduate and head out to "make prayers of their educations" (Bl. Basil Moreau), we promise our prayers and good wishes!…
The Center for Ethics and Culture is co-hosting a colloquium "On Secularization" at the Law School of the Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité, May 12–13, 2017. This colloquium marks the beginning of a new scholarly research collaboration on Christianity and the West organized in collaboration with the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy), and the Centre d’études du Saulchoir (France).…
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture awarded the 2017 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation at a Mass and banquet on April 29, 2017, attended by more than 400 guests, including persons with Down syndrome and other genetic disorders and their families.…
In a letter to the editor published by the ND-SMC Observer, director Carter Snead described the vision that informs the work of the Center for Ethics and Culture. Writing in response to a previously published op-ed penned by a Notre Dame alumnus, Professor Snead wrote,
The Center for Ethics and Culture takes seriously the capacious nature of Catholic social teaching across the spectrum of human issues. We understand that all our work and thinking should be animated by a commitment to radical hospitality, human dignity, solidarity and the common good. We know that this calls us to speak out in defense of the unborn child, the refugee, the undocumented immigrant, the poor and the disabled. We believe that our work reflects this commitment.
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February 24, 2017 -- The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture is excited to announce the 2017 CEC Polking Family Fellow, which results in a full tuition fellowship for three years of study at Notre Dame Law School. Hope Steffensen will begin studies in Fall 2017, joining the inaugural Polking Fellow, Margo Borders.
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