R. R. Reno

Pierre Ryckmans died in August. He was a Belgian trained in law who lived in Taiwan, where he studied Chinese language, culture, and literature, and then made an academic career in Australia. 
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The occasion of my first encounter with the theology of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik was a reading group at my wife’s synagogue. We were then living in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Elihu Milder, the rabbi then serving at Tifereth Israel, organized a group to discuss Soloveitchik’s spiritual classic, Halakhic Man. Continue Reading »

• I’m very pleased to announce that Mark Bauerlein will join the First Things editorial staff as our senior editor, beginning in August. Mark has taught English literature at Emory University for twenty-five years. Along with a tranche of scholarly books, he’s the author of The . . . . Continue Reading »

During commencement season, a number of speakers were deemed politically impure. Earlier in the spring, Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was outted as a supporter of traditional marriage by gay bloggers and resigned under pressure. More recently, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock has . . . . Continue Reading »

Nova et Vetera has published a detailed analysis of proposals to revise Catholic Pastoral practice for the divorced and remarried.Cardinal Kasper has floated the idea of shifting from canonical adjudication of annulments to a more open-ended process of pastoral discernment that will allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion under certain circumstances.  Continue Reading »

Yes, it sounds like a pipe dream. Rebuild Penn Station? Why imagine that’s possible when New York can’t even build a new subway line or bring a direct rail link to any of its three airports? Continue Reading »

Good news today. The decision in the Hobby Lobby case helps prevent progressives from achieving their goal of making religious people into dhimmis, second-class citizens in a society governed by secular values. Continue Reading »

We recently hosted a talk by John Beaumont, author of The Mississippi Flows into the Tiber: A Guide to Notable American Catholic Converts to the Catholic Church. It’s a wonderful compilation of convert stories that includes a few folks associated with this fine magazine. John recounted a number of them. He ended with an arresting question: Why do people convert to Catholicism? There’s no one answer, of course, but many reasons, which John winsomely summarized. Continue Reading »

“The past devours the future.” So writes Piketty in his conclusion to Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Because r>g, wealth accumulates faster than the general welfare of society increases. The rich get richer and richer and richer and richer. Inheritance of the tremendous (and tremendously concentrated) wealth becomes more and more important. Democratic values decline. A plutocracy dominates. It’s a “potentially terrifying” prospect. Continue Reading »

I’ve finished Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Once again, I want to report the pleasure this book gave. Piketty’s historical approach has helped me achieve a bit more clarity about the economic transformations I’ve experienced in my life time: the end of the middle class myth in America and the rise of a new, globalized economy that richly rewards a meritocratic elite. Continue Reading »