What is the purpose of the Christian life? Or of any life? Ephraim Radner proposes an answer: “mortal goods.” These he defines as “the sustained realities and possibilities of birth, growth, nurture, generation, weakening, caring and dying.” The tending and conservation of these goods, . . . . Continue Reading »
For most of the Church’s history in the United States, Catholics have sought to demonstrate to their often suspicious neighbors the possibility of being a faithful Catholic and a patriotic American. This has been no easy task, given the modern and Protestant character of the nation’s founding . . . . Continue Reading »
Matthew Martens, a career attorney and an evangelical, believes that criminal justice needs a new ethic, specifically, a Christian one. Drawing on a range of theological and biblical texts, he argues that we should “conform such a system to Scripture”—that is, to “Christ’s love for . . . . Continue Reading »
Of the two million waiters and waitresses working in America,” Batya Ungar-Sargon writes, “just over half own their homes.” My wife, who worked as a waitress for fifteen years, was in the lucky half. But we have watched many of her friends and colleagues struggle. Whether they work in the . . . . Continue Reading »
If Famous Jewish Sports Legends is the leaflet in the punchline of a joke about “light reading” in the movie Airplane!, and Jewish Nobel Prize Winners would be a tome, Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik’s Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship is . . . . Continue Reading »
A few months ago, an old school friend confessed that she’d been reading a lot of “AO3”—Archive of Our Own, the world’s most popular fan fiction website. I assured her that she wasn’t alone. Fan fiction—stories about fictional characters or real-life celebrities, written by the . . . . Continue Reading »
“Why Did We Destroy Europe?” It’s an arresting title, chosen by Michael Polanyi for a 1970 essay that looks back on the conflagrations that consumed Europe between 1914 and 1945. (The essay can be found in Society, Economics & Philosophy, a posthumous volume of selected papers by . . . . Continue Reading »
Sometimes I will exclaim, when dealing with irritating and difficult people on the phone, “What’s wrong with these people?” Actually I do this a lot, not just on the other end of the phone, but in the face of this or that author, car driver, or person standing ahead of me in the cashier’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a great victory for the pro-life cause. Prior to the 2022 decision, dubious constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court had impeded any effective limits to abortion. And it had given us a Constitution that was—as William Lloyd . . . . Continue Reading »
On a spring day seven years ago I was driving across Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn feeling unusually right with the world. I felt peaceful and uplifted because I had, a few days before, settled in my mind a difficult, painful question: I would eventually leave my husband. We had children . . . . Continue Reading »
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