Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!
MENU
Donate to First Things

  1. Theology

Faithful and Invisible

On December 18, 2023, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which granted permission for Catholic priests to bestow blessings upon couples in “irregular situations” and same-sex couples. Discussions surrounding the meaning and implications of . . . . Continue Reading »

Criminal Omissions

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 »

Letters

Matthew Schmitz aptly describes “Biden’s Collegiate Catholicism” (April 2024) in two senses. First, Biden’s agenda takes its ideological cues from, and serves the class interests of, the “most formidable redoubts of Democratic power”: the universities. Second, Biden’s politics embody . . . . Continue Reading »

Boundaries of Belief

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 »

Coming and Going

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 »

Letters

Living within a stone’s throw of the nation’s leading collection of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood art housed at the Delaware Art Museum, I was familiar with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s art but not his poetry. I therefore appreciate having been enlightened by Brian Patrick Eha’s “Rossetti the . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

There’s a poem by John Donne that makes a presence of an absence; his absent love becomes as real to the speaker and more fully his than if she were present. This could illustrate what Katherine Rundell wants us to see in the work of John Donne, seventeenth-century metaphysical poet and preacher, . . . . Continue Reading »

Featured Authors

    Filter Tag Articles

    2024 First Things. All rights reserved.
    View our privacy policy here.
    212.627.1985 ft@firstthings.com