Many have been hoping that the Church under Pope Francis will allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. Some argue for a change in Church teaching; many more urge the need for a “pastoral” response that leaves doctrine intact. In an interview today, Cardinal Gerhard . . . . Continue Reading »
Judging by the tracks programmed by my local classical music radio station, no composer of merit existed before the Baroque period. DJs with soothing voices regularly serve up Vivaldi, Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach, especially during rush hour. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons ought to be renamed the Four . . . . Continue Reading »
Goma airport, the gateway to one of the largest and most strategic cities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s unstable and mineral-rich east, is the city’s only connection to distant Kinshasa, the DRC’s capital and a place unreachable from Goma by road. Consequently, it’s also one of . . . . Continue Reading »
I For years I’ve pondered a cultural and social paradox that diminishes the vitality and diversity of the American arts. This cultural conundrum also reveals the intellectual retreat and creative inertia of American religious life. Stated simply, the paradox is that, although Roman Catholicism . . . . Continue Reading »
Pope Paul VI was carried and sustained by his faith, something much stronger than anything in this world. Continue Reading »
As is usual in religious struggles, François Fénelon lost the battle in the early-modern debate over mystical prayer but is winning (for now) the war. Censured by the pope for some of his views regarding “pure love,” he has sometimes been cast as the naïve dupe of the illuminist widow Madame . . . . Continue Reading »
On a typical afternoon, I drop off my eight-year-old daughter and her best friend at ballet lessons and return home to meet my five-year-old son’s friend for a “play date.” Their mothers and I appear to have everything in common. We all order our children’s clothes from the same upscale . . . . Continue Reading »
Catholics in the last fifty years or so have almost completely ceased to do dogmatic theology. Save for a handful of admirable holdouts, we have practically given up the fruitful enterprise of a millennium: the believing mind’s effort to understand the Christian mysteries. The deep things of God, . . . . Continue Reading »
Explain, John Hick once asked me in an undergraduate class, the traditional axiom that my church holds, “There is no salvation outside the Church.” He argued that Catholics officially maintain this teaching while actually saying the opposite because they cannot come to terms with the reality . . . . Continue Reading »
The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Mediciby elizabeth levhoughton mifflin harcourt, 316 pages, $27 Immortalized by Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel, rumored to be the most beautiful woman in the world, the epicene . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
