Congratulations on 35 years of exemplary cultural leadership.
A responsible, discerning critic builds culture by extolling the good, the excellent, the beautiful, and the true, as well as by censuring the corrupt, the base, the ugly, and the trivial. Since its founding in 1982, The New Criterion has been an indispensable voice of just that sort. Readers are refreshed by the intelligence and sound judgment of its writers. Courage of critical judgment inspires, and elegant prose delights. These qualities are all the more precious because of their rarity in our time of banal mediocrity and gimcrack ideology.
With high intellectual standards and steadfast faith, we can nurture excellence in the arts, courtesy in daily life, and nobility in public affairs. This is no mean service to our age, and First Things is honored to share this mission with The New Criterion.
Editor, First Things
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…