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How Happiness Studies Lets Us Down
Demand elicits supply. The demand I have in mind is the demand for happiness: Suicide rates are up, depression is up, and though people today seek to be happy,...

The Lessons of Fr. Paul Mankowski
Paul Mankowski, S.J., who died unexpectedly four years ago this past fall, was the kind of priest who seemed to spring from pages of the best Catholic fiction—a larger-than-life...

Letters – February 2025
Gendered Proclivities Rhys Laverty (“Lady Scrooges,” December 2024) was perceptive in pointing out that women helped build today’s unforgiving cancel culture. On the other hand, the feminism responsible is...

Farewell to Liberal-Imperial Diplomacy
In late June 2022, a small rubber dinghy sailed down the Danube River in Budapest, past the Hungarian Parliament. It displayed a sign: “Mr. Pressman, don’t colonize Hungary with...

AI and the Unhappy Society
Recently I had an experience that I suppose is becoming increasingly common. The large, publicly traded energy company that has taken control of gas and electric utilities in my...

No Method but Christ
When I try to explain to people why we need to recover patristic interpretation, the biggest obstacle I face is the desire of my interlocutors to establish the one,...

Wickedness
Though they probably don’t realize it, many Americans spent the tail end of 2024 engaged in a serious theological debate about the nature of evil. This being America, the...

Paleofuturism
Dawn’s Early Light:Taking Back Washington to Save Americaby kevin d. robertsbroadside, 304 pages, $32 When Kevin Roberts became president of the Heritage Foundation in 2021, he set out to...

Declaring Independence
American Heretics:Religious Adversaries of Liberal Orderby jerome e. copulskyyale, 384 pages, $40 In the summer of 1775, amidst the heat of revolution, two hundred armed men gathered in Prince...

The Church of Empathy
Circle of Hope:A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Churchby eliza griswoldfarrar, straus and giroux, 352 pages, $20 Circle of Hope is a Philadelphia church that...

The Death and Life of Bohemia
Talkin’ Greenwich Village:The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capitalby david brownehachette, 352 pages, $32.50 I moved to New York in 2011 and started hanging out in...

Goethe’s Bargain
Goethe:His Faustian Lifeby a. n. wilsonbloomsbury, 416 pages, $35 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is among the most confusing and compelling of all European figures, but one thing everyone can...

Orthodoxy at War
St. Sophia Cathedral is quiet and almost empty when I step inside on a wintry morning. Saints in icons on the walls and pillars stare at me. A huge...

Forgiveness: A Statement by Jews and Christians
In January 2023, a group of Jewish and Christian scholars met to form a circle of study and conversation. We shared an important conviction. As divergent as our faith...

Parents Can’t Fight Porn Alone
Madi grew up in a religious home, blessed with attentive parents who took the dangers of technology seriously. They installed filters on her devices and required her to hand...