First Thoughts

First Links — 2.12.16

Interceding Discreetly
Br. Barnabas McHenry, O. P. , Dominicana

Take a Look at the Mental Junk Food Colleges Assign Students
Peter W. Wood, Federalist

Persisting in Prayer with the Caritas Podcast
Leah Libresco, Patheos

On the Right to the Most Ideal Life Possible
Melinda Selmys, Aleteia

My Secret Life as a Forbidden Second Child in China
Karoline Kan, Foreign Policy

The Little Sisters of the Poor on Why They Can't “Just Sign the Form”
Sister Constance Veit, L. S. P., Catholic Review

We Are Hopelessly Hooked
Jacob Weisberg, New York Review of Books

Nicholas Sparks and the Evils of Banality
Heather Havrilesky, Book Forum

What We've Been Reading—2.12.16

Francesca Murphy On the night after the actor Alan Rickman died, I watched the version of Sense and Sensibility in which he plays Colonel Brandon. What a beautiful movie, and what a wonderful performance he gives. Since then I have been reading Sense and Senibility on my kindle. Jane Austen was . . . . Continue Reading »

The Disconnected Establishment

Rod Dreher recently posted excerpts of a letter from one of his readers. It was an extended, largely negative assessment of my analysis of our political moment, “An Abandoned White Middle Class.” There I argued that the changing nature of our leadership class explains the populist rebellion, at . . . . Continue Reading »

Shakespeare Through Anecdotes

Did you hear the one where . . . ?

Paul Menzer has heard it. He’s heard the one with the drunk Richard III, the one with the fat Ghost of Hamlet’s Father stuck in the trapdoor, the one with the father–daughter pair playing Romeo and ­Juliet, the one where Othello’s makeup rubs off on Desdemona’s face to give her a beard. In fact, he’s probably heard several variations on any given Shakespearean anecdote, a handful verifiable, but most patently recycled, exaggerated, or apocryphal—yet in a different sense, in Menzer’s paradoxical view, no less true. Continue Reading »

First Links — 2.10.16

Whatever it Takes to Make Lent Hardcore
Melinda Selmys, Patheos

Cover Story: The Headscarf, Modern Turkey, and Me
Elif Batuman, New Yorker

A Conversation with Rowan Williams
John F. Deane, Image

A Pope, a Patriarch, and Great Expectations in Cuba
Ivan Plis, National Interest

Debased Coynage
Edward Feser, Edward Feser

The Psychologists Take Power
Tamsin Shaw, New York Review of Books

To Hell With Hope
Fr. Chase Pepper, C.S.C., Holy Cross Vocations

Chess is not a Sport but a Game. So What's the Difference?
David Papineau, Aeon

Pope Francis and the Two Cities

For a class on Catholic Social Teaching this past fall, I assigned my college students Robert Hugh Benson's dystopian novel Lord of the World. I thought the book would pair well with our extensive studies of the thought of Pope Francis, in part because Francis has conspicuously mentioned Benson’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Speedos or Shorts? Bikinis or Bathing Suits?

The world that Reich built does not simply want to revise concepts of sexual decorum; It wants to eradicate them.
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Letter from a Toronto Jail

One of Canada’s prisoners of conscience, Mary Wagner, in a moving letter from her Vanier Centre cell, writes of her concern that many members of our Christian medical associations, “despite their earnest desire to resist doctor-abetted suicide, have succumbed to defeatism.”She points to . . . . Continue Reading »

Richard John Neuhaus and the Church of Christ

Recently, I came across an essay by Professor Cathleen Kaveny, published in Commonweal magazine, criticizing Fr. Richard John Neuhaus for sowing division among members of the Body of Christ. Her charge is that—for political reasons—Neuhaus was more interested in forging alliances with . . . . Continue Reading »

A Lost Chapter from Herodotus Concerning the Super Bowl

And in the distant empire of Usa there is a strange custom that takes place once per year among the barbarians of that land, which occurs in the following manner. It is a winter festival to the god of Foo Tball, as the inhabitants of that land call him. Throughout the year, the strongest and most . . . . Continue Reading »