Matthew Schmitz

First Things brings a sporting spirit to the intellectual life—a willingness to sweat, a belief in fair play, and the desire to win. Continue Reading »

Dispatches from the debate: Any left that is unable to see the way we are enslaved by lust will end up the unwitting handmaiden of those who exploit. Continue Reading »

Though Benedict is still living, Francis is trying to bury him. Continue Reading »

America’s national epic was not written in meter and verse. Nor, for that matter, was it written by an American. Yet The Pilgrim’s Progress is nonetheless the primal American story, the account of our mad flight from order and lonely quest for grace. Hemmed in by civilization, resentful of kin, . . . . Continue Reading »

Anna Stubblefield had dedicated much of her career to advocating for the “radical inclusion” of disabled persons—and given her principles, rape was the only way to do it. Continue Reading »

The Young Pope depicts a Church that no longer seeks the favor of the world—and is all the more fabulous for . . . . Continue Reading »

Children are not exposed to enough violence. Yes, I know the grim statistics, how a child who enters middle school has already witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 other violent acts on TV. As he and his friends enter adolescence, they take up first-person shooter video games. In college, he becomes . . . . Continue Reading »

A pope who speaks with singular eloquence of our need to resist the technocratic logic of the “throwaway culture” seems bent on leading his Church to surrender to it. Continue Reading »

Exodusby thomas joseph white, o.p.brazos, 336 pages, $32.99 In days past, to study Scripture was to study the tradition of its reception. The sacred text was read with the Fathers of the Church, accompanied by commentaries and catenae, with frequent glosses explaining the meaning of difficult . . . . Continue Reading »

During my time at Princeton, there was no more popular insult than “tool,” an epithet hurled at anyone who tried too hard. Of course, the term was unavoidably classist. An Amazon executive’s daughter who had attended Lakeside or a banker’s son who’d gone to St. Ann’s didn’t have to . . . . Continue Reading »