Joseph Bottum

The Ethics and Public Policy Center sends along word that, on April 20, in the Royal Castle in Warsaw, the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Kazimierz Ujazdowski, presented First Things board member George Weigel with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal, Poland’s highest honor in . . . . Continue Reading »

It is death by philosophy, it is murder by decree, and the curiously named "freedom to die" becomes a freedom only to die. Wesley Smith reports on the case of Andrea Clark, down in Texas¯where a state "futile-care law" has allowed the bioethics committee at St. . . . . Continue Reading »

So, on the repeated¯and repeated, and repeated¯recommendation of literary friends whose judgment I usually trust, I’ve spent the past few weeks reading comic books. Or, rather, graphic novels , though, I confess, even after I finish them, they still seem to be just comic books: Alan . . . . Continue Reading »

Darfur is finally bubbling back up into the view of the American media. Yesterday, the UN issued its first sanctions over attacks in Sudan’s western region. Al Qaeda has named Darfur as a new battleground in its war against the West. The NATO meeting scheduled for Thursday has the . . . . Continue Reading »

There are pro-life arguments¯or perhaps that’s the wrong word. Talking points, maybe, or tropes or rhetorical gestures. Anyway, there are things one hears in pro-life presentations that I’ve never understood the force of. That many of the suffragettes and early feminists (and even . . . . Continue Reading »

A submission to F IRST T HINGS came across my desk recently. It was about the excesses of a women’s-studies department at a major American university, and I tried to read it. I really did. I mean, it’s my job to look carefully at all this stuff, but, somehow, I just couldn’t get . . . . Continue Reading »

If you look over in the left-hand column of this web page, you’ll find a link for this¯a notice that the magazine is looking to hire a new managing editor to replace the estimable Erik Ross, who has decided to try new horizons in Poland. If you’ve ever dreamed of working at F IRST . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s common among Catholic commentators to look back on the era from the late 1930s to the early 1960s and see a great time of conversions in America and England. There was something in the air that was drawing secularly important or promising people to the Church. The list is well known, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Muriel Spark is gone , dying on Thursday at age eighty-eight, the last representative of Great Britain’s high literary converts before Vatican II. There’s a revealing moment toward the end of her 1992 memoir of her early career, Curriculum Vitae . Times were hard for her in 1953. She . . . . Continue Reading »

On Saturday, a banquet was held in Washington, D.C., to mark the establishment of a new center for Thomistic studies¯a center named after America’s best-known Thomist, Ralph McInerny. It’s hard to imagine anyone more deserving of the honor. In a recent issue of F IRST T HINGS , . . . . Continue Reading »