Today in “On the Square,” George Weigel pays tribute to “one of the greatest of American Jesuits and the living embodiment of Catholic liberal learning at Georgetown.” He means Father James Schall, and this is very high praise. (Earned, I will add on the testimony of many others.) Father Schall, he writes,
is a marvelous teacher and a great spiritual director; and he is both because he is a man at peace with the absurdities of the world, which he knows to be part of a divine plan he doesn’t presume to grasp fully. Yet he is no ambiguist: he would rather thrust his hand into the fire than put a thought not congruent with the truths of Catholic faith on paper. I imagine he would happily die a martyr;
To know more about why Dr. Weigel speaks that way of Father Schall, read In Praise of Father Schall .
Also appearing today is The Kids Are Not All Right by Elizabeth Marquardt of the Institute for American Values. She uses the movie The Kids Are All Right . It offers “a sometimes searing exploration of the raw emotions at stake when women who never intended for their children to have a father suddenly find a father in their lives,” but its view of their lives is a fantasy. She shows why, and how Hollywood’s sunny portrayal of another aspect of the sexual revolution is also another disservice to its victims.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…