Today we released the March 2016 edition of First Things on our website. For the amusement of readers (and the delight of anyone who likes to get a glimpse behind the curtain), I have compiled some of the also-ran titles: headings for pieces that were suggested at our titles meeting but nixed for being too punny, too punchy, or simply too much.
In the list below, the final title of the piece is in bold, and the nixed titles are listed below it. Enjoy!
Coates’s Lost Cause by R. R. Reno
Apostle of Grievance
The Body’s Lessons by Sarah Ruden
The Heresy of Weightlessness
Womanhood Contracted to a Span
Monument to Failure by Justin Shubow
Artless Architecture
Tear it Down!
March Madness? Just Say No by Gilbert Meilander
Standing Athwart the NCAA
Haven’t an Inkling by A. N. Wilson
A Rosicrucian at Oxford
Backstreet Mystic
Cult-Leader of Coinherence
The Green and the Brown by Helen Andrews
Ecological Sturm und Drang
The Garden of Nazi Delights
Alexi Sargeant is a Junior Fellow at First Things.
Rome and the Church in the United States
Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste…
Marriage Annulment and False Mercy
Pope Leo XIV recently told participants in a juridical-pastoral formation course of the Roman Rota that the…
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…