I was reading a reflection by Monsignor Charles Pope concerning beliefs, philosophies, and God. He opens by stating that

There is a tendency in the modern age, at least in the Western world, to trivialize the human person. One of the ways we do this is to say, in so many words, that it does not really matter what a person thinks or believes.

This is by no means a new sentiment (in the sense of being unique to today), but rather has permeated the "modern" era. For example, writing about 100 years ago, G.K. Chesterton said that this was often the attitude of the day. He continued by writing that

“It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages….But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period.” (Heretics)

It's been up for a while now, but I only recently found the site where the ISI book reviews get published. Here, then, is the link to my review of Professor J Budziszewski's "The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction." The book itself was well-written; Budziszewski is fast becoming one of my favorite writers and speakers, and is also one of the most welcoming professors I've met. Here is an excerpt of the review:

A little more than three years ago, when I first moved to Austin, I had very few friends of my own in the area. The nearest and dearest person I knew was my brother, who at the time lived less than a mile away from my apartment complex. He was a residential assistant at the time, and so lived in the dorms and had all of the duties and responsibilities which go with that post. I spent a good deal of my free time with him at St Edward’s, but he often had to make rounds or resolve some crisis or other, and so I spent a good deal of time talking to his fellow RAs and his residents.

I remember very few specific conversations which I had, but one stands out a bit in my mind today. One of the residents had taken up riding horses—my favorite activity growing up, and a thing which I still dearly miss—and so I had frequent short conversations with her. We talked a few times about horses, but on this particular night, we talked about something else. I don’t specifically remember how we got onto the topic of birth control and religion, but we did. It actually may have been a conversation about religion—she was an Anglican of some sort—but it drifted into the realm of birth-control. At some point, she mentioned that some relatives of hers were Catholics and that they insisted that one couldn’t use birth control. They didn’t know why they couldn’t, only that they couldn’t BECAUSE THE CHURCH SAYS SO.