David Mills

“For many of us who love the act of writing—even when we are writing against a deadline with an editor waiting for the copy—there is something monastic about the process, a confrontation with one’s thoughts that has a value apart from the proximity or even perhaps the . . . . Continue Reading »

Priestly celibacy, Pope Benedict XVI recently told a gathering of priests, as reported by the Italian journalist Sandro Magister, is an anticipation “of the world of the resurrection.” It is the sign “that God exists, that God is part of my life, that I can base my life on Christ, . . . . Continue Reading »

We need to stop smuggling “comprehensive doctrines” into our public discourse, because that deceptive refusal to admit metaphysics distorts and corrupts it, writes senior editor R. R. Reno in Metaphysics and the Common Good , today’s “On the Square” article. In . . . . Continue Reading »

Particularly for pastors: a friend who pastors a small Evangelical church nearby writes in response to   Memorial Gratitude , my reflection on the difficulty some of us have in feeling the kind of gratitude that soldiers deserve: I tried something in church on the Sunday before Memorial . . . . Continue Reading »

The discussion of Joseph Bottum’s Blood for Blood , today’s “On the Square” article, has started up. Readers who have not yet read his provocative criticism of the death penalty, in which he takes a very different (and to me more compelling) position than the usual . . . . Continue Reading »

Appearing tomorrow “On the Square”: Joseph Bottum reflects on the expected execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner this coming Friday as “a strong example of why we don’t need to use the death penalty—and why, as a consequence, we need not to use the death penalty.” . . . . Continue Reading »

A young friend of Irish descent, who spent his high school years in Dublin, displeased by our publication of Stephen Webb’s  How Soccer is Ruining America , writes: First Things can write what it wishes on theology, no arguments from me. You can write what you will on politics, up . . . . Continue Reading »

The nonsense many college students are taught “takes three forms: condescension, literature taught as a crossword puzzle, and historicism,” writes Fr. Edward Oakes in Nonsense Drives Them Away , today’s “On the Square” feature. He is describing a new book review . . . . Continue Reading »

An interesting exercise in church-state relations: Amish Farming Draws Rare Government Scrutiny . Their cows generate heaps of manure that easily washes into streams and flows onward into the Chesapeake Bay. And the Environmental Protection Agency . . . is determined to crack down. The farmers . . . . Continue Reading »

“You can be an agnostic or an atheist when it comes to religion but it’s much more difficult when we’re talking about the World Cup,” notes CCN editor Dave Schechter in The Religion of Football . He goes on to make the usual comparisons and ends with the platitude “Just . . . . Continue Reading »