Richard John Neuhaus

In the current issue of the Weekly Standard , Joseph Epstein has a scintillating analysis of the celebrity cult to which much of our society is in thrall. The article put me in mind of a lecture many years ago by Paul Tillich, a towering figure of the time, at the University of Chicago. In an . . . . Continue Reading »

The battle of the polls goes on and on: Pro-life up, pro-life down, pro-choice down, pro-choice up. Some of us have been following the survey research on attitudes toward abortion for decades. The striking thing is how steady the data are. A small minority thinks abortion should be legal for any . . . . Continue Reading »

Harriet Miers continues to be pilloried by numerous conservatives, and some of them are being quite nasty about it, as Matthew Scully notes on the op-ed page of the New York Times . Scully is the author of Dominion , a book on human responsibility for animals that has received major attention in . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Benne of Roanoke College, writing in the November issue of FIRST THINGS, offers his take on the ELCA Lutheran churchwide assembly in Orlando. The sexuality task force did not get all that it wanted and, as a result, the ELCA has not formally departed from two millennia of Christian teaching . . . . Continue Reading »

The 19th annual Erasmus Lecture, with Dr. Timothy George holding forth on the men who shaped modern evangelicalism, was a splendid affair. He held the close attention of the mostly Catholic audience of more than 500 people at the Union League Club, many of whom readily acknowledged that they were . . . . Continue Reading »

Keep in mind that this is intended as high laudation. Ken Johnson, art reviewer of the New York Times , is discussing a new exhibit at the Neue Galerie in Manhattan: “The Viennesse Expressionist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) had only two urgent interests: himself and his sexual fantasies. Out of . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s Columbus Day and Justice Antonin Scalia is the grand marshall of the parade down Fifth Avenue. He takes great satisfaction in being an Italian-American, and he knows how to strut with all the fun and none of the arrogance that goes into fine strutting. I confess he is among my favorite . . . . Continue Reading »

A number of readers have asked whether I will be responding to Garry Wills’ long article in the New York Review of Books (October 6) claiming that a few friends and I are manipulating the Vatican and the White House to create what he calls government by "the fringes." When the pope . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Some readers have complained that First Things, and I in particular, have had a great deal to say about just-war doctrine but relatively little to say about the application of that doctrine to the conflict in the Middle East. The reason is that just-war doctrine is central to the . . . . Continue Reading »

Year after year since the evil empire’s fall, the promise of Poland increases. If history is capable of decency, the world will forever acknowledge its debt to Poland for the gift of Karol Wojtyla, John Paul the Great”for his universal appeal was inextricably joined to the particularity of his . . . . Continue Reading »