I really think learning should be optional, ma’am.” This statement comes from one of my ninth graders in response to yet another lecture of mine on how important it is for students to bring their literature books to class—a particular hurdle in my case because I teach at a military school. . . . . Continue Reading »
Last Saturday, the British magazine The Economist , sponsored a debate on this resolution: "Religion and politics should always be kept separate." There was an audience of about a thousand, and at the beginning of the debate the vote was about five to one in favor of the resolution. This . . . . Continue Reading »
Eight years ago in our urban Catholic parish in Connecticut, a teenager I’ll call Elizabeth started a club for girls. Small but fortunate in its members, the club survived Elizabeth’s departure for the Naval Academy. Another well-formed, homeschooled teenager took her place, and when she in turn . . . . Continue Reading »
It is not only conservatives but Americans in general who have had a hard time reconciling what they think of as characteristically American aspirations with the actual life of modern American cities. It’s a certain disharmony between the way we think and the way we live. Our fierce attachment to . . . . Continue Reading »
The December issue of First Things has just appeared, the first of the Yuletide deliveries to arrive and mark the beginning of the Christmas season.Well, maybe not, since the issue contains a short piece from me called “The End of Advent,” which bemoans the omnipresence of Christmas: . . . . Continue Reading »
For the early Christians, living in societies that were at best indifferent to Christianity and frequently hostile, the challenge was how to survive without compromising the faith. During the time of persecution, Christians would find it often impossible to be true to Jesus and accommodate the . . . . Continue Reading »
In the November issue of First Things, Joseph Bottum wrote, “The weakest set of candidates in living memory has taken the field, and we still have more than a year left of watching these people, lumbering and blumbering toward the goal line.”I thought it wrong at the time, for the dark . . . . Continue Reading »
This week, the school-voucher referendum went down to a crushing defeat in Utah. It was a very ambitious proposal, covering absolutely everyone. Some supporters thought it too ambitious. In any event, the state and national teachers unions, plus other public-employee unions, predictably poured tons . . . . Continue Reading »
For some time now, I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s terrific 2003 book, A Short History of Nearly Everything . (You should interpret "some time" to mean "a pretty long time," because not only is this a hefty-sized book, it’s also about science.) In his . . . . Continue Reading »
Some people believe that the Catholic novel is either dead or terminally ill. In 1982, one critic referred to his book on the Catholic novel as an " elegy for an apparently dying form, " and two years later another wrote that " the religious or spiritual novel is in some sense only a . . . . Continue Reading »
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