Michael D’Antuono has removed his exhibit of The Truth, a painting depicting President Obama in a Christ-like pose complete with spread arms and a crown of thorns. The outstretched arms appear to be holding back two sides of a dark curtain. Behind him is the presidential seal. D’Antuono removed . . . . Continue Reading »
Today begins the new website design for First Things : more punch, more power, more action, more zowie! Or so I’m told. You’ll have to check it out to see for yourself. As I promised in our May issue , we’ve launched our redesigned and much-improved website, which includes both a . . . . Continue Reading »
On previous Chelsea gallery walks featured in this forum , I have played the role of naysayer. Just as Nietzsche could not forgive Christianity for what it did to Pascal, I had difficulty forgiving the art world for what it did to friends who might have been wonderful painters. Saddled by a (not . . . . Continue Reading »
Terry Eagletons Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate is an engaging, witty, and largely successful critique of the new atheists, especially Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great ) and Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion ), whose delusional . . . . Continue Reading »
No one has mistaken our day as an age of powerful, rational discourse. The McLaughlin Group doesn’t usually evoke memories of Lincoln-Douglas, and Twittering about your favorite bagel from Panera isn’t exactly correspondence on the level of John and Abigail Adams. But perhaps I’m being unfair. . . . . Continue Reading »
Norman O. Brown. Once a favorite of counter-culture intellectuals, we do not hear his name very much anymore. He has been eclipsed, perhaps, by his prescience. Once a shocking voice of new revelations, Brown now reads like a strangely urgent advocate of ideas that postmodern culture takes for . . . . Continue Reading »
Nothing to be done, Estragon says, struggling with his boot as he sits on a rock in a barren waste. Two and a half hours later, not much has changed. Lets go, he says to his friend Vladimir. They do not move, except to clasp hands, grasping for each other in an empty . . . . Continue Reading »
We all knew this fight was coming. The Catholic Church and the Catholic colleges have been heading toward a crash since at least 1990, when John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae , his apostolic constitution regulating Catholic institutions of higher education. And now, at last, the battle is . . . . Continue Reading »
R. Scott Appleby is embarrassed by the vulgarity of the protests out at Notre Dame. And perhaps he should be”for those protests are pretty vulgar. People are weary of it, the Notre Dame history professor told the Washington Post . I certainly feel this is not the best way to . . . . Continue Reading »
[The following is the keynote address delivered at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on May 8, 2009.] Introduction I am deeply honored to give the Keynote Address at this annual gathering of Catholics to pray for our nation. I express my heartfelt esteem and gratitude to those who, . . . . Continue Reading »