. . . picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been. / Lives in a dream, / wearing a face that he keeps just for Vanity Fair.
Ah, me. Christopher is an old acquaintance, and the most fluid writer around today, but some years ago he oddly decided to take the hackneyed pose of the journaliste maudit , a Robert G. Ingersoll for our time, bashing, like most everyone else in his world, the great juggernaut of God.
His latest seems to be a rant on the Dennis Miller show :
Mother Teresa spent her whole life saying [that what Calcutta needs] is a huge campaign against family planning. I mean, who comes to that conclusion who isn’t a complete fanatic? She took—and I would directly say stole . . . millions and millions of dollars and spent all the money not on the poor, but on the building of nearly 200 convents in her own name around the world to glorify herself and to continue to spread the doctrine that, as she put it—when she got her absurd Nobel Peace Prize—that the main threat to world peace is abortion and contraception. The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your [w]itch to go to.
He’s attacked Mother Teresa before, of course, but this is so over the top—so bizarre and self-righteous, so offensively phrased and incoherently thought—that it’s hard to know quite how to take it.
As a plea for help, is my first guess.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
