On a “what if” radio program sixty years ago, I heard the newly inaugurated President Lincoln persuade Robert E. Lee that his loyalty to the United States Army should outweigh his allegiance to the state of Virginia. In short order, Lee quells the rebellion; in 1868 he is elected to succeed . . . . Continue Reading »
The Roman Catholic Brothers of Charity in Belgium have capitulated to their home country’s embrace of euthanasia. Continue Reading »
It’s never the right thing to avoid explaining that white supremacy is evil. Continue Reading »
The rightful place of the Catholic is always alongside the poor, the marginalized, the excluded—all the more so because Catholics have traditionally been overrepresented among the poor, the marginalized, and the excluded in American society. Continue Reading »
Between the World and Me has been received with great fanfare. It won the National Book Award in nonfiction for 2015, and its author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, was recently awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Our liberal establishment is aflutter, hailing Coates as his generation’s spokesman for . . . . Continue Reading »
Given the politically-correct hysteria that typically surrounds any discussion of racism these days, I hesitate to use the term. But it’s hard to find another that fits certain reactions to Synod-2015 from the port side of the Barque of Peter. Exhibit A: Shortly after the Synod concluded, the Web . . . . Continue Reading »
Of all the documents of Vatican II, few have been more discussed and written about than Nostra Aetate. The official text, the shortest of the council’s documents, is only five paragraphs long, containing forty-one sentences. The fourth paragraph, on the Church’s relationship with the Jewish . . . . Continue Reading »
This past spring, the renowned sociologist Robert Putnam made waves with a claim that American churches had dedicated “all their resources”to fighting about abortion, gay marriage, and other matters of sexual morality, when they should have been addressing poverty and social inequality.
Continue Reading »
A horrible tragedy occurred earlier this week, when a young white male walked into Emanuel A.M.E. church in historic Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine congregation members. Unfortunately, many common responses to the massacre threaten to undermine efforts to seek real, substantive . . . . Continue Reading »
One recent day at the Baltimore clinic where I care for the homeless, I spoke with a patient about the death of Freddie Gray. He prefaced his thoughts—as many people do when they discuss police brutality—with the caveat that there are good police officers, those who honor the law as they work diligently to enforce it in neighborhoods like Sandtown-Winchester, where Gray was injured. He then showed me scars on his body from his encounters with the police over the years— some of which had occurred after he was already in custody. He described how officers would raid his home and take half of his drugs and his money, then charge and arrest him for the remainder. “They’re a necessary evil,” he said. “If they weren’t out there, it would be total chaos.” Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
