R.R. Reno is editor of First Things.

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Religion in the Modern World

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15 Sep 2010

Elite Leadership and Anxiety About Islam

As September 11 passed, I found myself thinking about the Ground Zero mosque, and the bizarre on-again, off-again story of planned Koran burning in Florida. Why, I found myself wondering, have these stories come to the fore? I’m more and more convinced that these strange episodes—as well . . . . Continue Reading »

15 Sep 2010

The Golden-Mouthed Preacher

Today the Church remembers St. John Chrysostom, a great preacher and leader in the early Church. Made Archbishop of Constantinople in 398, he was impolitic enough to denounce the opulence, hypocrisy, and debauchery of the imperial court, earning him banishment in 403. While I was writing a . . . . Continue Reading »

13 Sep 2010

The History of Twentieth-Century Catholicism

Yesterday I posted some thoughts about a recently published history of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. A friend chided me for ending my analysis with what he took to be a dismissive parting shot that does to progressive Catholic theology what the progressives tend to do to the . . . . Continue Reading »

10 Sep 2010

Hawking and Creation

William Carroll, one of the most subtle Thomists currently thinking about science, metaphysics, and faith, has put up a characteristically clear and lucid analysis of Stephen Hawking’s claim that modern physics has shown that we don’t need God to get the universe going. As Carroll . . . . Continue Reading »

8 Sep 2010

Patriotism and Solidarity

In a long posting at Public Discourse, ” The Mosque’s Lesson in Loyalty ,” Carson Holloway provides helpful analysis of the legitimate human impulse to love one’s own. Beginning with family and clan, radiating outward to neighborhood, community, and nation, we have a native impulse toward . . . . Continue Reading »

3 Sep 2010

Deranged People With Guns

What’s next?  An animal rights suicide bomber at the Bronx Zoo? Our tendency is to try to read some larger meaning into the bizarre story of James Lee, the paradoxically anti-human humanist—saving us from ourselves by making sure there aren’t any more selves—who held . . . . Continue Reading »

2 Sep 2010

Beating Up on the Left

Alex Knepper is an undergraduate at American University, and he’s not gonna take it any more. In a forcefully written denunciation of what he diagnoses as a mindless anti-conservatism at the root of the Leftist mentality, ” The roots of the left’s love affair with Islam ,” . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Sep 2010

American Exports

Unfortunately, the United States government and the development agencies it funds seem determined to export our culture of contraception. As a story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports , American agencies have been intimately involved in the design of a big push to “normalize” . . . . Continue Reading »

31 Aug 2010

Restoring Dignity to Blue Collar Work

I’ve long enjoyed reading Camille Paglia, surely one of the most interesting voices in academia, full of piss and vinegar, and capable of original thought. I remember reading her insightful and very funny essay, “The Joy of Presbyterian Sex,” in the 1980s and marking her down as . . . . Continue Reading »

31 Aug 2010