Archive
More than thirty years of First Things articles at your fingertips.
Please note that some of our content may not be available on this web archive at this time. If you cannot find a specific article, please contact us.
Articles
Catholic Advocacy of Torture: A Teaching Moment for the Catholic Bishops?
Writing at Vox Nova , the author known as “Morning’s Minion” has published a post calling for consistency in the application of canon 915 — the denial of Holy...
Nancy Pelosi and the Catholic Bishops
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was interviewed in a recent edition of Newsweek , in which she had the opportunity to set the bishops straight on the participation of Catholics...
Saul Alinsky and Jacques Maritain
Following the manifold scandals involving the Catholic Campaign for Human Development comes a twofold discussion by the blog Cosmos, Liturgy, Sex — the first getting to the root of...
Abortion, Capital Punishment, and War — One of These Things is Not Like the Other
Ed Stoddard of Reuters’ religion blog Faithworld carries a roundup of the skirmish between Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, has claimed that Rhode...
Rome’s Talks With the Lefebvrists Begin
Vatican Information Service on the Meeting between “Ecclesia Dei” and the Society of Saint Pius X : “On Monday 26 October in the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, headquarters of the...
Abraham Foxman vs. The USCCB
In August 2002 the Consultation of the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs released a statement, “Reflections on Covenant and Mission” ,...
A Just War Theory of Home Schooling?
In “A Just War Theory of Homeschooling” (InsideCatholic.com), William Fahey reminds us that homeschooling, while desirable in some circumstances, “can also become a destructive ideology”: Contrary to the Catholic...
Two Letters
I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path. I want you to know...
On the Naivete of Ayn Rand
Paul Zummo ( Crankycon ) has written a good review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged : The atheism is only a small part of the issue with objectivism. Galt...
“50 Best Catholic Movies of All Time”
William Park (InsideCatholic.com) lists, in his judgment, “the fifty best Catholic movies of all time” . Some readers, myself included, were surprised by the absence of The Mission ....
Distributists! Austrians! Marxists! Oh my!
In our ongoing roundup of commentary on Pope Benedict’s social encyclical Caritas in Veritate , the Distributists and Austrians weigh in, and renegade liberation theologian Leonardo Boff believes the...
The Lost Art of Reading
As we rush into another week of blogging, posting, texting, and tweeting, consider David Ulin on “the lost art of reading” : Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps...
When Twitter went down.
In May 2009 the Bishop of Paisley, Rt Rev Philip Tartaglia, issued a pastoral letter — read aloud to every parish in Scotland — cautioning Catholics against an obsessive...
What did Margaret Sanger think of abortion?
That Margaret Sanger — eugenicist, birth control activist and founder of Planned Parenthood — wished to preserve society from blacks, immigrants, and the “feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic,...
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical “Caritas in Veritate”
Introduction Caritas in Veritate is the first social encyclical of the 21st century, and Pope Benedict XVI’s chosen topic couldn’t be timelier. Forty years after the publication of Pope...