Penultimate Penalty

Anthony McCarthy on the Man Who Loses His Right to Life

Who made you? God made me. Why did God make you? God made me to know him, love him, and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next. Succinctly and baldly, the first answers of the old Penny Catechism tell the Catholic child the purpose for which he is made.

He is, like every other child, made in the image of God, and has a transcendent end which defines the kind of being he is and orders his capacities. That end is a moral goal to be achieved through choices made in this life.

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Anthony McCarthy is the founder and director of Bios Centre and a visiting scholar in moral philosophy at the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria. He previously held the post of research fellow at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford and holds degrees in philosophy from King's College London, University College London, and the University of Surrey. He has lectured widely and published on ethical issues for both academic and wider audiences.

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