Most of us that grew up in the peripheries don’t buy the central premise of this pontificate of making the Church less European. I agree with R. R. Reno’s assertions in “Rome’s Concordat” (March 2024) that this pontificate sounds like a focus group at the World Economic Forum or a DEI . . . . Continue Reading »
The central commandment found in American etiquette Torah is this old chestnut: Never discuss religion or politics. Do so, and you run the risk of offending those who hold different views. This is a grave sin, because polite society, after all, is an ideal predicated on the polite fiction that . . . . Continue Reading »
In his first speech as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson sounded like a preacher in a pulpit: “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one who raises up those in authority,” he began. “He raised up each of you, all of us. And I believe that . . . . Continue Reading »
In a hollow just north of Bennington, Vermont, near the New York state line, nineteen monks at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration live and die in seclusion. It’s the only Carthusian site in North America, a remote spot in the shadow of Mt. Equinox, highest peak in the Taconic Range. In 2005 . . . . Continue Reading »
Controversy surrounds the disinvitation of Fr. Calvin Robinson from the closing panel of the Mere Anglicanism conference held in Charleston, South Carolina, in January. Asked to lecture on the topic “Critical Theories Are Antithetical to the Gospel,” Robinson argued during the main session that . . . . Continue Reading »
The development of doctrine is a notion more frequently invoked than understood. When, as is too often done, a novelty or even a reversal of traditional Christian teaching is proposed as a “development,” the term is being abused. Indeed, it is being deployed to denote precisely the opposite of . . . . Continue Reading »
In December 2023, Michael Cassidy, a Navy veteran and devout Christian, encountered an obscene statue of Baphomet erected by the Satanic Temple inside the Iowa Statehouse. He tore it down. For this act of what he described as spontaneous “Christian civil disobedience,” he was quickly charged . . . . Continue Reading »
My friend J, a computer programmer, once convinced his former roommate—also a programmer—to watch the Japanese art film Asako I & II, about a woman who falls in love with two identical-looking but different men. J’s roommate sat patiently through this intricate, two-hour . . . . Continue Reading »
In the literature of the First World War, full of the horrors of trench warfare that ravaged a generation even for the victorious Allies, a single heroic leader stands apart from the mass-murdering generals and clueless politicians who were responsible for the slaughter. Whereas their corroded names . . . . Continue Reading »
Disappearance is usually felt as something bad. When things disappear, we sense the pull of death, the call of the dust, the loss of the palpable good. I have recently been moving house after many years in one place, with all its accumulations. Things, often intimate things, are left behind, given . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
