This Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI will canonize seven new saints. His honorees include four women, two of whom—Franciscan sister Marianne Cope and lay contemplative Kateri Tekakwitha—have American roots. Their canonizations follow just two weeks after Benedict named German mystic Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church, a high honor bestowed on only three women before her. . . . Continue Reading »
The interesting thing about writing on a blog with men is that the woman writing knows that some things that concern them are incomprehensible to her and that some things she will write about will be incomprehensible to them. I never feel so sensitive about that as when I want to write about . . . . Continue Reading »
Jeffrey Polet kicks back on his rocker, and proceeds to shred a whiny-but-poignant-sounding Atlantic article, about motherhood refused and about the true consequences of the sexual revolution denied, to pieces. In a gentlemanly way, of course. Not to be missed. . . . . Continue Reading »
Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement by mary j. henold university of north carolina press, 304 pages, $32 Ihave never met a nun—there was a time when this would have been a truly bizarre statement from an American Catholic. Nuns were everywhere: . . . . Continue Reading »
I never met Germaine Greer, but I did see her once in live performance—and a most diverting performance it was. The year, as I remember it, was 1970. Norman Mailer had recently published a very long article on the then newly declared women’s revolution and had succeeded, as was his wont, in . . . . Continue Reading »
The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity.By Leon J. Podles.Spence. 350 pp. $27.95Leon Podles has his finger on something very important. A symptom of the problem Podles has discovered is this: men don’t like church. To be more precise, masculine men have a problem with Christianity, . . . . Continue Reading »
A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.By Wendy Shalit.Free Press. 304 pp. $24. Despite its modest title, this book is a bombshell. In a manner both courageous and passionate, Wendy Shalit challenges the bored, desensitized masses of American women to use their female intuition in finding . . . . Continue Reading »
If the first casualty of war is the unwelcome truth, the first tool of the discontented is the welcome lie. Such lies cluster freely around Thomas Aquinas. Here I want to engage two frequently encountered in feminist literature: that he claims women are defective males and that he claims that the . . . . Continue Reading »
Josh Billings remarked profoundly that “the trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much as ain’t so.” There are those who know John Chrysostom said that “the image of God is not found in Woman.” (Actually, he said that “the image of God is not found in . . . . Continue Reading »
From all appearances, it is now back in style to be critical of American individualism. Indeed, that critique has never gone entirely out of style, and for very good reasons. But views on these matters also seem to follow cycles which, if not of Schlesingerian predictability, are nevertheless . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
