As Christianity spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, it became apparent that the biblical doctrines concerning God, morality, and future retribution had similarities with the philosophical speculations of the Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics. The Fathers and medieval theologians had no . . . . Continue Reading »
Global warming has achieved the status of a major threat. It inspires nightmares of a troubled future and propels apocalyptic dramas such as the summer 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow. Even were the Kyoto treaty to be fully implemented, it wouldn’t make a dent in the warming trend, which . . . . Continue Reading »
Six months out of grad school and into our first jobs, my husband and I fell in love with a house, a beautiful, eccentric Victorian. It was, of course, a fixer-upper, with a few caved-in ceilings, and it stood on a block that might be called borderline—there were some neglected houses nearby . . . . Continue Reading »
The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America by Richard John Neuhaus was published in 1984. Herewith, twenty years later, reflections on the influence of the book and contemporary problems raised by its argument, with a response by Father Neuhaus. Stanley HauerwasI should not like The . . . . Continue Reading »
Czeslaw Milosz was born in Szetejnie in 1911 and raised in Wilno, both of which are in present-day Lithuania. His family was part of the large Polish-speaking population of that city. For this reason he identified himself as a Polish writer. Living there through his university education, he was . . . . Continue Reading »
When the practice of sex-change surgery first emerged back in the early 1970s, I would often remind its advocating psychiatrists that with other patients, alcoholics in particular, they would quote the Serenity Prayer, “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage . . . . Continue Reading »
What good is it that girls need never go to war Or wear a shield or march in columns orBow down to Mars, if they take out a bloody knife And blind the womb that bears a fated life?The first who ever tried to cut away her child Deserved to die . . . . Continue Reading »
Truths are one thing, the way they are set forth is another. These words express what many have judged, for good or ill, to be the particular spirit of the Second Vatican Council. The words come, in fact, from the Council itself, from John XXIII to be precise. They are found in his opening . . . . Continue Reading »
Richard Rorty's Aversion to traditional religion and religious belief is well known. In 2000, for example, he told a packed house of students and former colleagues at the University of Virginia that he was a “militant secularist” and that the Enlightenment was “right to suggest . . . . Continue Reading »
The heavens hold more stars than earth has grains Of sand, and given time, each tiny sun Combined should make a world where starlight stains The sky bright white and dark would be undone. And yet the night remains. The dim stars gleam Their separate ways, and constellations drawn Connect their . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
