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Marriage is Not a Social Convention

In a Web Exclusive article today, I elaborate problems that I see in Amoris Laetitia. Here on First Thoughts, I want to discuss the parts of Amoris Laetitia that are especially helpful for an engaged couple. The document offers an excellent diagnosis of why marriage can be difficult in our time: . . . . Continue Reading »

First Links — 4.29.16

Give Us This Day Our Daily Hedgehog
Leah Libresco, Aleteia

The Librarian Who Saved Timbuktu's Treasures from Al-Quaeda
Joshua Hammer, Wall Street Journal

Corporeality Bites
Rachel Lu, National Review

China may be Readying New Crackdown on Religion
Associated Press, Crux

A Conversation with Camile Paglia
Tyler Cowen, Medium

Shakespeare Not Our Contemporary
James Bowman, New Criterion

The Smug Style in American Liberalism
Emmett Rensin, Vox

How I Discovered True Masculinity
Matt Moore, Gospel Coalition

My Unexpected Pregnancy Turned Out Better Than Everyone Expected
Heather Scott, Verily

Archetypes of Exorcism

Ray Russell enjoys the distinction and curse of being a horror writer’s horror writer. Though he helped rescue baroque gothic tales from Lovecraftian tendrils with his more Hemingway­esque renderings, he achieved nothing higher than cult status. Better-known figures such as ­Stephen King and ­Guillermo del Toro tout him, and his short story “Sardonicus,” a minor classic, received a film adaptation for which he wrote the screenplay. Continue Reading »

Soul of France

In the first pages of We Have Been Friends Together, Raïssa ­Maritain recounts one of her earliest memories. She is five, and her parents have rented a room in their house to a woman who holds classes for young children. She remembers watching this strange woman from afar with hushed reverence: “I heard the multiplication table being repeated . . . and I was overwhelmed with the feeling that here was instruction and knowledge and a truth to be known; and my heart almost burst with the desire to know.” . . . . Continue Reading »

See No Evil

If there’s any good reason to distrust the self-awareness of contemporary progressives, it's the cultural epidemic of pornography. Of all the Sexual Revolution’s fruits, porn is arguably the one that has rotted fastest. It has defied the categorical wisdom of libertines by growing in users and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Christian Roots of Soil Stewardship Week

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” That is a truth that gets double billing in the Bible with the Apostle Paul quoting the Psalmist David in his first letter to the Corinthians. But it is a truth that gets short shrift today. We want an unbridled personal autonomy and a . . . . Continue Reading »

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