Mary Rose Somarriba

Readers of First Things will thoroughly enjoy Eric Cohen’s new book, In the Shadow of Progress , released this month from Encounter Books. Last week, Leon Kass introduced the book at an event put on by The New Atlantis at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC (audio available . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s another reason to travel to Belgium, if the world’s best beer and chocolate weren’t enough to draw you there already: its beautiful, well-preserved beguinages . If feminism means a desire for independence from patriarchal authority, the beguines — a Roman Catholic laic . . . . Continue Reading »

Yesterday, Thomas Hibbs gave a praising review of Christopher Nolan’s latest achievement , The Dark Knight here on the First Things website: With the record-setting release of The Dark Knight , his sequel to Batman Begins , Christopher Nolan . . . stakes his claim to be our most inventive and . . . . Continue Reading »

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Mary Eberstadt’s excellent piece from our current issue — viewable online for free — ” The Vindication of Humanae Vitae .” In it, you’ll find a comprehensive survey of the current data which, although drawn from . . . . Continue Reading »

A few days ago, I posted a note on the discovery of an ancient, pre-Christian tablet that includes mention of a messiah rising in three days. (For information on the conference held in Jerusalem today where this was discussed, click here .) Some have suggested my post asserted that the . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times reports an interesting new find in Jerusalem: “A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus . . . may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.” According to the . . . . Continue Reading »

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, built in 1916 across the street from what would become the home of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, is a little-known casualty of the September 11 attacks. The four-story church collapsed with the fall of the south tower, leaving only “a handful . . . . Continue Reading »

According to New York Times , Senator Obama went yesterday to Zanesville, Ohio, where he expressed his support for faith-based organizations—or, as he put it, for fulfilling the failed promises that the Bush administration had made. “When I’m President,” he said, . . . . Continue Reading »

Every generation lives off the cultural inheritance of its predecessors. Among that inheritance for today’s American Catholics is a network of parochial schools built by their immigrant forebears, which served both to teach the faith and ground the community.But today, many of those Catholic . . . . Continue Reading »