R. R. Reno

Ours is the age of misplaced priorities. Instead of art and culture, we focus on politics and punditry. Chatting over lunch, we talk about the upcoming elections or Sarah Palin’s significance for the conservative movement or the effects of the Chinese trade surplus. Imitating news analysts, we speculate about what it will mean for the future… . Continue Reading »

A friend recently wrote, expressing a worry that his parish priest sometimes takes up political issues too quickly and too freely. My friend is by no means a quietist. He’s a First Things sort of fellow, very committed to the significance of faith in the public square. One can’t read . . . . Continue Reading »

The decision by NPR to fire Juan Williams continues to churn the waters, and I find myself thinking more about the trajectory of American liberalism (and conservatism too). On the Guardian website, Michael Tomasky has a blog, and he steps up to defend the folks at NPR . As was the case in my . . . . Continue Reading »

Some of the comments made on my last posting have caused me to think further about the larger dynamics suggested by the circumstances surrounding Juan Williams’ dismissal. Here is the dynamic I see at work. When I was born, the idea-driven world (academic, media, and so forth) was dominated . . . . Continue Reading »

I gasped when I read the story in The New York Times . The folks at National Public Radio fired Juan Williams, ostensibly because of his comments on “The O’Reilly Factor,” which were judged by NPR to be “inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined . . . . Continue Reading »

Lucian Freud’s painting merits attention, but his artistic reputation has as much to do with his “bohemian mystique” as with his canvases. So writes Maureen Mullarkey, an exacting observer of contemporary art and diagnostician of its many self-deceptions in her review of Martin Gaylord’s Man with a Blue Scarf… Continue Reading »

The latest issue of The City features an article by First Thoughts contributor Matthew Milliner: ” The Tale of Two Art Worlds .” Milliner recounts the trajectory of postmodern art criticism, which over recent decades has adopted a progressive political outlook that . . . . Continue Reading »

In ” Marriage and the Law of Tradition ,” a new posting on Public Discourse, R. J. Snell recounts the reasons St. Thomas gives authority to tradition. St. Thomas viewed the laws of society (a notion that encompassed written laws as well as social norms) as subject to rational scrutiny. . . . . Continue Reading »

In the history of the church, one of the most famous conflicts was between St. Bernard (d.1153), the charismatic abbot of Clairvaux, and Peter Abelard (d.1143), the brilliant medieval logician and theologian. St. Bernard thought that Abelard’s new approach to theology, an approach that . . . . Continue Reading »

As C-FAM reports , representatives in the Council of Europe, the European legislative body that meets in Strasbourg, France, reversed an effort by abortion proponents. A resolution came before the Council that was designed to make it difficult for medical professionals to refuse to perform or . . . . Continue Reading »