Letters—October 2026

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We welcome letters to the editor. Letters appear two issues after the article to which they are responding. Letters under three hundred words are preferred, and they may be edited for length and clarity.

Letters responding to articles published in this issue should be received by October 5 for publication in the December issue. Send them to submissions@firstthings.com.

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Liturgy Matters

I’m grateful for Stephan Pax Leonard’s essay on his conversion to Orthodoxy (“Why I Became Orthodox,” June/July 2026), with its evocative descriptions of how the beauty and restraint of the Russian Orthodox liturgy call participants toward transcendence. 

His descriptions reminded me of my own first visit to St. Petersburg, when I too visited many churches and found myself rapt and yearning during the liturgies. As a Catholic, I was happy to discover that there was at least one Catholic Church in the city, with Mass times listed by language: Russian, English, Polish, French. It was intriguing to see French included—were there really that many French Catholics living in St. Petersburg? Entering the church, I was not surprised to find that it offered little of the beauty or mystery to be found in the Orthodox churches; the interior was scarred and barren, still undergoing renovation after being ransacked and used for storage during Soviet times. What was surprising was the congregation: about two dozen people, all of them French-speaking Africans. I hadn’t seen a single person of African descent my whole time in St. Petersburg, but here they were, dressed in brightly patterned clothing, singing and swaying to percussive rhythms. It was not a liturgy that inclined me toward transcendence or that was culturally available to me at all, really. But it was beautiful in a way completely different from the Orthodox liturgies I had been attending—the joy of the participants was undeniable. It felt like a vivid display of the universality of the Church and a demonstration of the value of adapting the liturgy to different cultures. I’ve often felt the same way when attending guitar Masses in Latin America (or in American churches with Latino congregations)—they might not “invite otherworldliness” (as Pax puts it), but they do seem to proceed from and nourish a deeply held faith. 

I think that when Western churches lost their connection to their own cultural roots, they tried to rejuvenate their liturgies by borrowing from cultures like these—that is, from people who seem less touched, and therefore less degraded, by modernity. Maybe the Mass could become more alive and accessible if it had the bright rhythms and explicit emotionality of a Latino or African liturgy? That kind of borrowing may have worked for Fauves or rock musicians, but in liturgy the result has typically been an unhappy hodge-podge, with the joyfulness gone and the transcendence too. Adapting the liturgy to different cultures is one thing; adapting it to the inherent cultural rootlessness of modernity might be an impossible task. 

Chris Killheffer
north haven, connecticut

My favorite author, by far, is C. S. Lewis—more than even Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. But there is one point on which I disagree with him—he writes in Mere Christianity that one should not choose a church based on preference. In the preface he says: “Above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language the question should never be: ‘Do I like this kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true? Is there holiness here?’”

I think there can be nothing wrong in being drawn to Orthodoxy, for example, by the beauty of the service, as Stephen Pax Leonard testifies. It is also the reason why Christianity was brought to Russia, when, in the ninth century, the emissaries of the Russian prince told him that the beauty of the Byzantine service was such that “they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth.” It is the same kind of thing that apparently brought Mr. Leonard to Orthodox Christianity, as well as another First Things author, Paul Kingsnorth. 

And, surely, the beauty of C. S. Lewis’s own work is what helps greatly in bringing people to Christianity as well?

Dimitry Zarechnak
silver spring, maryland

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Off the Trail

As an Eagle Scout and father of another Eagle, I eagerly began reading Christopher Motz’s assessment of the challenges currently facing Scouting America (“Scout’s Honor,” June/July 2026). Unfortunately, his take is both narrow and unpersuasive. Motz focuses on the Scout Law’s pledge that “A Scout is Reverent,” and then argues that reverence for God is no longer a core principle—as evidenced by the 2013 decision to allow gay youth and leaders into the organization—which in turn has led to a precipitous decline in membership. Neither of these propositions holds up to scrutiny. 

First, reverence for God remains unambiguously part of the twelve-point Scout Law and the Scout Oath, which is recited by scouts at the start of every meeting: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my Country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight” (emphasis added). Underscoring those pledges, Scouting America has a robust religious emblems program to encourage scouts to grow stronger in their faith. Benedictions at major events and grace before summer-camp meals are standard. 

Second, Motz cherry-picks membership data. From a peak of about five million in the early 1970s, Scouting has been in steady decline since. Lots of factors contributed, including the explosive growth of youth sports as an alternative after-school and weekend activity. The most recent drop coincides with the COVID pandemic, where scout meetings were another casualty of excessive government regulation. It’s been tough for Scouting to recover.

Most surprising, however, was Motz’s total silence on Scouting’s shameful sexual abuse scandal, which paralleled the experience of the Catholic Church. The scandal eroded the moral standing of Scouting in the eyes of many and tainted the organization in the minds of many parents. In my view, this catastrophe, resulting from years of inexcusable oversight failures, is the primary reason why Scouting has suffered a loss of stature and membership.

Fortunately, as in the Church, there are hard-working adult scouters who are rebuilding—convincing parents that Scouting offers a strong moral structure (as plainly reinforced by the Scout Oath and Law) as well as wholesome, practical teamwork and leadership skills that are sorely needed today. I hope that Motz reconsiders Scouting America for his son and perhaps even commits himself to rebuilding and restoring Scouting in America.

Michael Reilly
wilmington, delaware

Christopher Motz is right to question Scouting America’s value. What he has to say about Baden-Powell and his experience in Scouting rings true—I watched the court cases he mentions unfold in real time. I say this as a 1969 Eagle Scout who was raised by a Boy Scout of the 1930s who later returned from the Pacific to serve as a scoutmaster in the late 1940s. He said Scouting ran through his blood. I thought I had inherited that blood type, until I followed in his footsteps as a scoutmaster in the early nineties: At that time, I battled with mothers and professional scouters who disagreed with my position concerning mothers and daughters joining boys at camp. 

What happened to the Boy Scouts has not been accurately or succinctly explained in any commentary I have reviewed. Somebody has to say it: Radical feminism killed the Boy Scouts. Since at least the 1990s, radical feminists have infiltrated the program through boardrooms, professional Scouting positions, and local troop leadership. The objective? Destroy this toxic, male-only program, and allow their daughters to become Eagle Scouts because it is an early step to power. 

Boys today are faring poorly. The honorable male mentorship of the early Scouting days is more important now than ever. It is time to “steal the key,” as Robert Bly’s Iron John story implores. Trail Life is one option.

Philip Stromberg
webster, wisconsin

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A Both-Sides Problem

While I have become inured to Liel Leibovitz’s polemics against those who do not concur with the Trump/MAGA agenda, his attack on Democratic senator Cory Booker in “The Education of Cole Tomas Allen” takes his customary approach to a new extreme (June/July 2026). Booker stated that America is in a “constitutional crisis” and that Americans should not keep silent about this condition. Because he made this statement, it is bizarrely implied that somehow he is promoting or condoning violent acts.

I am reminded of one of the planks of the Fascist Catechism, “Mussolini is always right.” We see the same attitude in this country with Trump’s name substituted for that of Mussolini. Although I am not a fan of whataboutism, I find it interesting that those who strongly criticize the rhetoric of the left have remained silent about Trump’s language—often foul, angry, and borderline obscene. When a president refers to fellow citizens as scum, vermin, enemies of the people, and threats to humanity, why does this not qualify as the “moral cretinism” and “malice” that Leibovitz denounces?

Those seeking to turn back the mean-spiritedness and irrationality that is in the ascendancy certainly have the right to identify what is wrong with current conditions.

Donald B. Delano
orange, california

While agreeing with much of what Liel Leibovitz says in his recent column, I must take exception to the following: “It’s of little use . . . to issue statements calling on both sides of the political aisle to turn down the temperature. In the first place, what we have here isn’t a both-sides problem.” 

On the contrary, it absolutely is a both-sides problem. The most egregious purveyor of violent rhetoric in the American political landscape is none other than President Donald Trump. Remember January 6, 2021? Remember when he posted a picture of himself wielding a baseball bat next to a picture of a judge who had ruled against him? Remember when he publicly fantasized about Liz Cheney facing a firing squad? Have you noticed how frequently he says that people should be imprisoned or “put to death” for the unforgivable offense of opposing him? Do you remember just a few months ago when he threatened to obliterate an entire civilization? 

I can already hear your protests: “On January 6, 2021, he told the people to march peacefully.” Sure he did, once—near the beginning of the speech—and then followed it up with numerous exhortations to violence, ending with, “We fight! We fight like hell! And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore!” What do you think they took away from that speech? Their actions say that it wasn’t anything “peaceful.”

I’m getting a bit tired of people demonizing “the left” while ignoring or excusing the equally outrageous statements and actions of their own hero and fearless leader—who gets wider exposure than anyone else because he has the bully pulpit, in both senses of the word “bully.” Please remove the beam from your own eye before pointing out the splinter in mine. Both sides do indeed need to “turn down the temperature,” and who better to start that process than the man who is supposed to be our leader, and who has more influence than everyone on the left combined? 

Dennis J. Kosterman
madison, wisconsin

While I share Mr. Leibovitz’s concern about the increasing zealotry of the far left regarding political violence, Mr. Allen’s actions (and the lameness of his attempt at justifying or explaining them in prose) prompted a different question for me: Given that Mr. Allen is a confessing Christian, why is it that he was unable to simply live a quiet, moral life? As Mr. Leibovitz himself asserts, and I agree, Mr. Allen is “neither a lunatic nor a hardened ideologue”; therefore, we should be asking ourselves why such a person of faith is not capable of constructing a meaningful life around loving God and his neighbor.

The answer to this question, I fear, indicts all of us, as all of us are subject to the influences that I believe led Mr. Allen to his incorrect conclusion that the most valuable use of his God-given gifts was to attempt to assassinate President Trump: the absolutely constant barrage of outrage slop that now dominates every social media platform. While it is certainly no excuse (and I anticipate that Allen will be judged guilty in a court of law and spend the rest of his natural life in prison), it seems apparent to me that Allen’s actions were profoundly influenced by the outrage media he consumed on his smartphone, mostly likely (given overall trends) for hours each day. 

While Allen’s defense attorneys may not dare claim “influença” (a play on the infamous defense of the teenage drunk driver from 2013, who claimed his rich client had “affluenza” and therefore couldn’t understand the wrongness of his own actions), we need to confront the fact that, lamentable though extreme political rhetoric may be, what renders it genuinely dangerous is the individual decision (and it is a decision) to drink daily from the stream of glass-screened outrage. Fortunately, putting down our phones is also a far more feasible solution than demanding that other people stop shouting. As I see it, our faith demands that we stop listening to those whose money and fame rely on convincing us that a quiet, moral life is not worthwhile.

Jessica Otey
nellysford, virginia

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Two Thomases

If I may suggest an amendment to Mary Harrington’s thesis in “Thomophobia” (June/July 2026), I’m hopeful that we, as a society, will have even more success overcoming the problem she singles out, namely that “we have [Francis] Bacon’d ourselves from the relief of man’s estate to losing the language for explaining what man is—never mind woman.” 

My suggested amendment is to identify and therefore add a second, no doubt very different, Thomas to the list of phobias modern society and its leaders must overcome. More Thomas is better than less. Moreover, this Thomas is precisely he whom Bacon sought to surpass and erase in Bacon’s famous vision of a modern society in his New Atlantis, a fictitious, scientistic technocracy more concerned with how to augment humanity than to understand and protect what humanity is. That second Thomas, coiner of the term and author of Utopia, at which Bacon took aim, has too little a place in the current thinking about how to reeducate elites about the proper understanding and treatment of our fellow men and women. Sir and St. Thomas More—you’ve guessed him by now—seems to extend the diagnosis of Thomophobia to even some among those converted, so to speak, to Thomism. 

Thomas More, the Christian Humanist poet, politician, and patron of statesmen, with his practical moral philosophy and rhetorical genius, is a fitting pair for the more metaphysical and scholastic Angelic Doctor. “Thomas” means “twin.” Do not fear to pair the one Thomas with the other. The result of doing so may do more to counter a Baconian worldview than either Thomists or Thomophobes currently suspect.

Matthew Mehan
washington, d.c.

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Forgotten Opposition

I completely share John Lamont’s views on Catholic anti-Semitism; it has no place in the Church (“Catholics and Modern Anti-Semitism,” June/July 2026). But he leaves the impression that the German Catholic Church didn’t speak out about Nazi programs at all by saying that exactly one priest spoke out about the persecution of the Jews. Even Pius XII was careful when he spoke about the Jews because of possible repercussions for them, of which he was only too aware from the experience of the Dutch bishops. But the Church did speak out in opposition to Nazi programs, even if they didn’t specifically name the Jews. 

The German Catholic bishops, at conferences in Fulda and Freising in 1931, excommunicated all active leaders and members of the Nazi Party, which included Hitler. And the Catholic bishops as a whole opposed National Socialism, stating that its views, including its racial views, were incompatible with Catholic doctrine. All people, they said, were made in God’s image and were equal brothers in Christ. Cardinal Bertram of Breslau reflected their views in a published statement critical of Nazism’s “false nationalism and the worship of race,” which was repeated by all of the bishops collectively in a pastoral letter. It was repeated, too, in an encyclical by Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), the only encyclical ever written in German, which was smuggled into Germany and read from all the pulpits on Palm Sunday of 1937. The following day, the Gestapo raided the churches and confiscated all copies, and Hitler closed all Catholic institutions whose functions weren’t strictly religious. The German bishops at one point even prohibited membership in the Nazi Party, which they rescinded in 1933. 

Some Catholic bishops protested Nazi programs openly, and some individual priests spoke out as well, though they may not have named the Jews specifically. Just under three thousand priests and pastors (from various countries and denominations) were imprisoned in Dachau alone for something, of which at least six hundred died. And Gordon Zahn, in his study of German Catholicism during the war, admitted that the Church’s opposition to Nazism in the face of considerable risk was real, even as he faulted the Church for not mounting public protests, and for not questioning the duty of people to support the folk and fatherland, regardless of its actions. Could they have done more? Probably. But that’s easy for us to say.

George Willenborg
st. charles, illinois

John Lamont replies: 

It is certainly true that the German Catholic Church spoke out against many Nazi crimes. This is both good and bad. It is good in that the Catholic Church in Germany was not supine in the face of Nazi evil. It is bad because it indicates that the Church made an exception for the attempted Nazi annihilation of the Jews when it came to speaking out against these crimes. Why did the Church denounce the murder of non-Jewish disabled Germans, but say nothing about the murder of Jews? It was not just the fate of the victims that was at stake here, but the salvation of the perpetrators. They had an absolute right to be told by the Church that they were sinning mortally and would be damned for their acts, even if most of them would not have paid attention to this warning. If even one SS member had repented and refused to murder Jews as a result of such a warning, it would have been justified—regardless of the cost in human terms to the German Church. 

Moreover, it was obvious that the Nazis intended to eradicate Catholicism eventually by any means necessary. They said so. There was nothing to be hoped for in the long run by keeping quiet about their crimes against the Jews. No doubt the fear of a concentration camp helped to obscure these facts in the minds of the Catholic bishops. But in the end, if you accept the episcopal office, you accept any consequences that result from doing the duties of the office, no matter how terrible. If millions of German soldiers on the Eastern Front could go to a horrible fate in service of a bad cause, why couldn’t the bishops have done so in service of a good one? Could they not have followed the example of Claus von Stauffenberg, a devout Catholic, whose attempt to kill Hitler was motivated by his Catholic faith and who stalwartly faced death as a result of his unfortunate lack of success?

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A Psychiatric State

In the later Soviet Union, Helen Andrews writes, “There had to be a trial [before imprisonment]. The KGB was not allowed to torture people” (“Kinder, Gentler Repression,” June/July 2026).

Well, the KGB may not have been allowed to torture people or imprison them without trial—but Soviet psychiatrists certainly were.

Political dissidents were routinely diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia,” a disease unknown to psychiatrists outside the USSR, so that they could be locked up in asylums and “treated” with powerful drugs and physical restraints. By the early eighties, the Soviets, threatened with expulsion from the World Congress of Psychiatry, “voluntarily” withdrew from the organization prior to the 1983 congress.

Taras Wolansky 
kerhonkson, new york

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Bored-Again Believer 

Last Sunday, after church, I enjoyed the June/July issue of First Things. I read Lane Scott’s review of Girls, “Idle Hands.” Scott makes the case for parental involvement and teaching children valuable skills, so they feel competent enough to resist the temptation of the online global bazaar. “Teach children to do things, limit their exposure to temptation, and they will grow to value their own time. Leave them idle, without supervision, and they will not.”

I looked up from my copy to find my eldest girls in the backyard, sitting on a swing, staring at their bare feet, idle. I almost set them to work until I remembered my own idle moments in my childhood. I recall lying on the floor, near the front door. I don’t exactly recall the time, but I vividly remember contemplating the Big Bang Theory. I must have been in middle school. I reasoned that if there was nothing, then something, and if the something expanded, it must be expanding into something. I never went on to study theology or astronomical sciences, so I am not sure how impressive my thoughts were, but they were enough to protect me from atheism. In another moment of idleness, when I was waiting to start graduate school, I was cut early from my shift waiting tables. With nowhere to be and nothing to do, I drove around, idle. I was overcome by the love I had for my girlfriend. I decided I would propose. The next day, I spent my last dollar to buy her an engagement ring. I proposed, she said yes, and now we have four kids. 

Against Scott’s advice, I let them sit idle. Maybe they were talking about the children’s message at church, maybe they were just thinking about how lame their dad is, but they were not in the online bazaar. So, I would remind Scott that while it requires ever-increasing vigilance, we do not have to let children into the online bazaar. If they are kept out, there will be enough time to develop skills and enough time to sit idle on the swing.

Michael Harrington
north ridgeville, ohio