David Mills

Several of the respondents to R. R. Reno’s First Thoughts item “When Reality is Unspoofable,” which offered the program for last year’s meeting of the Catholic Theological Society, noted how often the theologians used”invoked might be the better term”the word “prophetic.” … Continue Reading »

Responding, I assume, to Don’t Forget Stalin , our friend Dimitri Cavalli sent the link to a newspaper article from 1953 giving Bishop Fulton Sheen’s modernization, read on his television show, of the funeral scene from Julius Caesar — modernized to refer to Stalin . . . . . Continue Reading »

As a parent, of the sort that reads or writes for First Things , you probably know anxiety all too well — and perhaps to an extent that seems to contradict what you say you believe about life and Providence. In today’s “On the Square” article, The Anxious Parent , I reflect . . . . Continue Reading »

The trampoline, that upset them. We bought one of the big round ones for our eldest’s sixteenth birthday a few years ago, and parents we knew (mothers more than fathers) were appalled that we’d bought such a dangerous thing and horrified that our children were allowed to jump on it when we were not there. Fortunately, no one ever asked how many children we let on the trampoline at one time, since sometimes all four jumped on it at once… . Continue Reading »

“Is there anything that man didn’t do?” Christopher Kaczor’s mother asked him after hearing his report of Ralph McInerny’s funeral Mass, and that is the theme of almost everything written about him after his death one year ago.  But the admirable thing about the man . . . . Continue Reading »

Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse? , asks Timothy Snyder on the New York Review of Books ’ blog. I’m not sure what is the point of the question, since I’m not sure what you know when you have an answer, but the figures and history are interesting — though readers will want to . . . . Continue Reading »

First Things has a long and implacable commitment to the defense of unborn life and an equally long and implacable resistance to all the philosophies that seek to justify the utilitarian treatment of such life. Here’s a selection of articles, all of the most recent ones and a selection of . . . . Continue Reading »

My friend thought I had slightly missed the point, or at least missed a point that should be made. In today’s “On the Square” column, The Apologetic Substitute , I relay my friend’s insights into the danger of replacing culture and with argument, and respond with some . . . . Continue Reading »

“Do you really think ‘anti-apologism’ is a problem?” wrote my friend Mark Barrett in response to last week’s column, “The Reasons the Heart Wants,” which tried to defend the craft of expositing the Faith against the claim that’s it’s pointless if not counter-productive. He was thinking of Catholics, while I had been thinking more of hip, postmodern Evangelicals … Continue Reading»

Today is the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, who is the patron of writers and journalists. Here are a few relevant passages from his classic work, Introduction to the Devout Life (which can be acquired in several forms here). These are warnings rather than instructions, more negative than . . . . Continue Reading »