Pope snubbed by Scottish Catholics Controversy has broken out over the Pope’s planned open-air Mass at Bellahouston Park, near Glasgow, with many parishes returning more than half of their allocated tickets for the event. The organisers now reportedly fear that attendance will fall short of . . . . Continue Reading »
The website CatholicCulture.org reports upset by Jewish leaders in St. Louis over the local Archdiocese’ support for a “Hebrew Catholics” association:Local Jewish leaders are disturbed by the Archdiocese of St. Louis’s support for the Association of Hebrew Catholics, an . . . . Continue Reading »
Another interesting article produced the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse : Constitutional expert Matthew J. Franck’s Same-Sex Marriage and the Assault on Moral Reasoning . I mention the article in part because a legal scholar on our board calls it “by far the . . . . Continue Reading »
So I’m sorry I haven’t time to say more about the great professors and students at the ISI conference. I was going to explain how Dr. Pat Deneen was right to connect Bloom and Dewey on the proposition that the past—including devotion to God, country, and so forth—is dead to . . . . Continue Reading »
The most important data point in this morning’s employment release—both for economics and politics—is the loss of 48,000 state and local government jobs. That almost wipes out the 71,000 increase in private employment. Because of the layoff of Census temporary workers, the headline . . . . Continue Reading »
The Patheos symposium on the future of evangelicalism introduced another set of essays on August 4th under the rubric of “Transforming Culture.” Karl Giberson, a physicist, scholar on science and religion, and Vice President of the BioLogos Forum, has written a short essay that expresses . . . . Continue Reading »
Today’s “On the Square” offers two articles, both giving insight into our own day through the stories of people who lived what might be called counter-Christian lives. In the first, David Hart reflects on Julian Our Contemporary , a man who, though “so fruitless an . . . . Continue Reading »
[Note: Every Friday on First Thoughts we host a discussion about some aspect of pop culture. Todays theme is “Renaissance woman” lists. Have a suggestion for a topic? Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com.] After posting the list of ” 50 Things a Man Should Be . . . . Continue Reading »
The host says these ads promote an “unthinkable” policy. I think not, alas. We are not anywhere near there yet, of course—unless one considers age-based health care rationing as a precursor. But that point aside, these ads pitch how—if we give up on the . . . . Continue Reading »
As regenerative medical researchers grow increasingly imaginative, we hear less and less about embryonic stem cell research, and indeed, the meme that it is the “only hope” for suffering patients is now patently absurd. Now, scientists have apparently figured out a way to turn one kind . . . . Continue Reading »