♦ According to the Wall Street Journal, construction spending on churches is up. For two decades, church attendance was falling and construction projects were declining. No more: “Religious construction bottomed out in late 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic separated people and accelerated the drop in in-person church attendance.” Since that time, spending on construction has increased each year, and it rose nearly 17 percent from June 2024 through June 2025.
♦ Results from a recent NBC poll: Thirty-four percent of young male Trump voters say “having children” is important for personal happiness (their highest listed priority), while only 6 percent of young women who voted for Harris say the same (their lowest listed priority).
♦ In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the New York Times asked six conservative undergraduate editors and writers at student-run publications to write about the significance of the event. One of them was Jeb Allen, who attends Amherst College. In addition to writing for student publications, he founded a Turning Point USA chapter at Amherst. He writes, “Last spring, I received a death threat in response to an article I wrote. My friends at Turning Point USA encouraged me to request the Amherst administration to drop all disciplinary action in exchange for a one-on-one dialogue with the student. That request was granted, and I found our conversation informative.” That sums up Kirk’s legacy: personal dialogue with adversaries rather than recourse to impersonal bureaucratic methods of destruction. Allen concludes, “While Mr. Kirk’s tactics might not have been perfect, his courage offers a far better model to emulate than the levels of political hostility that have become too familiar.”
♦ A sign of the times: In the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, we witnessed young people at vigils rather than at “mostly peaceful” demonstrations.
♦ The French aphorist La Rochefoucauld observes, “Our virtues are, most often, only vices in disguise.” Many a miser has shunned the vices of luxury. As La Rochefoucauld notes, “It is not always valour or chastity that makes men valiant or women chaste.” The same holds for piety. I’ve often noted to friends that the editor of First Things is a “professional Christian,” which is a spiritually perilous position, given the temptation to play up one’s religious ardor for the sake of promoting one’s career. Everything turns on what we desire, and virtue is true virtue when we seek it for its own sake.
♦ More wisdom from La Rochefoucauld: “Self-love is cleverer than the cleverest man in the world.” In my experience, great intelligence equips a man to find very subtle arguments to explain why his narrow self-interest amounts to the highest ideal of impartial justice.
♦ As long as I’m citing famous aphorists, I’ll turn to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: “Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.”
♦ Harvard Magazine published an interesting feature about the rising tide of conservative politics among Harvard’s undergraduates. We learn about Leo Koerner ’26, president of the Republican Club on campus. He grew up in Cambridge, and his family and secondary school were entirely without conservative influence. But he was radicalized by the pandemic and became clear-eyed about the dysfunctions of our society. As a freshman, Koerner started to entertain conservatism. He joined the Harvard Republican Club and a conservative debate society. And he converted to Catholicism. He’s not alone. “When Koerner was a freshman, he says the [Republican] club might have drawn 20 to 30 people to an event featuring a conservative speaker. Now, such events can attract over 100 students.” Moreover, the tenor has changed on the right at Harvard. The libertarian element has receded. As Koerner puts it, “GDP is not the soul of the nation.” And I’m willing to bet that the lure of Catholicism is pulling on many other young hearts at Harvard.
♦ John Henry Newman on the fatal error of modern intellectual life: It imagines that “truth is to be approached without homage.” As A. G. Sertillanges puts it in The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods: “Truth serves only her slaves.” I’ve taken the Newman quote from his University Sermons, which should be on everyone’s reading list, as should Sertillanges’s marvelous little book on how to cultivate the life of the mind.
♦ I recently met with a reading group organized by Germán Saucedo, one of our associate editors. The topic was Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs. The novella is best known as a political allegory that advances veiled criticisms of Hitler’s barbarism. But Jünger had larger ambitions. By my reading, the crux of the book concerns moral discernment. The two brothers who are the main characters are veterans of past conflicts. They have retreated from active involvement in worldly affairs: “We longed for a life washed clean of violence.” But they plunge into the darkness that descends. In an artful section, Jünger depicts the brothers entering the forest, which harbors great evil. The fog is thick, and they can find their way only by following a species of flower that lines the forest floor: “We would surely have lost the way . . . in the confusion had we not tracked the sundews.” Nature remains undefiled, and she guides them as they seek to discern their duty—and not only guides, but consoles with her beauty. “The eye is nourished by the sight of creation.” The brothers come upon a precious orchid. “Its imperishable form and structure [gave] us strength to withstand corruption’s breath.”
♦ Elise Ann Allen of Crux interviewed Pope Leo XIV. Answering a question about clerical sex abuse, the Holy Father said something important: “The fact that the victim comes forward and makes an accusation, and the accusation presumably is accurate, does not take away the presumption of innocence.” He went on to say, “The priests also have to be protected.” Unfortunately, the approach to sexual abuse accusations taken by the American Church, outlined in the Dallas Charter, precisely takes away the presumption of innocence. Perhaps Pope Leo can nudge the U.S. bishops toward a more just treatment of accusations.
♦ We have a number of events coming up.
On Monday, November 3, Bishop Erik Varden will deliver that 38th Erasmus Lecture in New York. His title: “In Praise of Translation.”
On Sunday, November 2, the evening before the Erasmus Lecture, we host A Night of Poetry with Ben Myers. This event takes place at the First Things office (9 East 40th Street, 10th Floor). It’s a great opportunity to hear Ben’s reading and see where the sausage is made at First Things.
On Tuesday, November 11, at the University of Dallas, our own Mark Bauerlein sits down with University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus to discuss “The Future of Higher Education.”
To find out more about these events, go to firstthings.com/events.
♦ Two First Things readers seek to form a ROFTers group in their areas. Get in touch with them to become a founding member:
Matthew Rayburn of Pasadena, California: mr.rayburn.75@gmail.com;
Ned Bachus of Hackettstown, New Jersey: nedbachus@gmail.com.
♦ We’ve launched our fall fundraising campaign. Although we run an excellent publication that wins a large cohort of subscribers, we’re dependent on your donations to fulfill our mission. Please consider making a contribution. You can do so at firstthings.com/donate.
