R. R. Reno

Jean Bethke Elshtain delivering the 2012 Erasmus Lecture, ” On Loyalty .” She died yesterday. It was not a surprise. Jean was suffering from a debilitating heart condition. But it was nonetheless a shock, as the sharp blow of death so often is, even when we see it coming. Jean was one . . . . Continue Reading »

Some books are great: Middlemarch by George Eliot, for example, or Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. They’re historically important, influential, and seminal. But the monuments of Western culture are not the same as personal touchstones. It’s not just the intrinsic value of certain books”their “greatness””that makes them existentially arresting; it’s also the time and place when they happen to fall into our hands… . Continue Reading »

War on the Weak We’re in the midst of a war on the weak. And I don’t just mean the unborn. We have a right to die, or so we’re told, and therefore we must legalize doctor-assisted suicide. Nobody is harmed, we’re again told, by the free decision of a terminally ill patient to end his life. . . . . Continue Reading »

First things remain first things. The dignity of the human person, the joys and duties of the religious life, the harmony of faith and reason, the profound, indispensible contributions that theologically serious citizens can make to a demo­cratic, pluralistic society: All these and more remain . . . . Continue Reading »

The Catholic Church betrays Christ’s call to love; “Its leadership works though domination, control, and punishment.” So wrote Fr. Bert Thielen, S.J., in a long letter explaining his decision to renounce the priesthood and return to the lay state of life. His letter saddened me. It was Bert who received me into the Catholic Church… Continue Reading»

Spenser’s Faerie Queene and James’ Golden Bowl as summer reading? I can hear my wife groaning and commenting that these recommendations amount to the intellectual equivalent of my usual vacation plans, which often involve climbing remote mountains and going on hundred mile bike rides. Continue Reading »

One often hears about how the Muslim world needs to “undergo the Enlightenment” and “engage modernity,” learning the virtues of supposedly modern tolerance. It’s an understandable but naïve sentiment. Democracy and the modern nation state are hell on minorities… . Continue Reading »

The U.K. is gearing up to legalize reproductive technology that manipulates genes. It’s the beginning of a technological revolution that will have a transformative influence over culture ten times greater than the invention of the Pill. This revolution will begin as a therapeutic imperative . . . . Continue Reading »

Father’s Day is the perfect American invention: equal parts moralism and money-making. Early in the twentieth century the dominant forms of Protestantism urged temperance and campaigned, successfully, for Prohibition. This famous episode in American history was part of a larger moral project, one very concerned with reinforcing what we now call family values… . Continue Reading »

Some months ago Fathers Thomas Joseph White and Austin Litke, O.P., played  bluegrass music at the World Youth Alliance headquarters here in New York. They’re good, and to be frank they also look kinda out-there. It’s not often that you see two guys in white habits playing guitar . . . . Continue Reading »