Mary Eberstadt

In 1883, speaking not as a novelist but as a bystander describing a terrible scene of carnage, Leo Tolstoy observed of what he documented: “We cannot pretend that we do not know this. We are not ostriches, and we cannot believe that if we do not look, there will not be what we do not wish to . . . . Continue Reading »

Solzhenitsyn famously defined the principal trait of the twentieth century in four words: “Men have forgotten God.” So far, the twenty-first century might be summarized in six: Men are at war with God. Awakened from agnostic slumber by new forms of temptation, chiefly the sexual revolution, . . . . Continue Reading »

Most people who believe abortion to be wrong believe it to be wrong intrinsically. By contrast, those who do not believe abortion to be wrong make a utilitarian deduction: A child at the wrong time can be a bad thing. Therefore, ending its life can be a good thing. A right to abortion, they believe, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Trump administration’s recent designation of several American cities as “anarchic jurisdictions” may turn out to have been nothing more than a quixotic gambit in the supercharged run-up to November 3. But the fact that it was thinkable in the first place points to a truth beyond electoral . . . . Continue Reading »

Rules pro-lifers should use to blaze a way forward. Continue Reading »

The case for American nationalism is clear. The United States is the most diverse nation on earth. If we will not have a nation and its constitution, then we will have anarchy. If we will not have a nation and its constitution, we will have Hobbesian war, figuratively or literally. What, after all, . . . . Continue Reading »

One recurring theme in Pope Francis’s teaching is that human realities trump scholarly abstractions: “La realidad es superior a la idea.” His signature phrase about pastors who have the “smell of the sheep” is the folk version of this maxim. Cautions about “rigidity,” “empty . . . . Continue Reading »

The logic of Roe is so quintessentially unnatural that the human heart will continue to overrule it, both inside the churchgoing flock and out. Continue Reading »

Begin with a sobering fact. During the past ten years, some of the sharpest observers of our time have come to believe that the tectonic plates underlying Western civilization have shifted momentously. One result is a deep, creative struggle among the thoughtful for new imagery and fresh analogies . . . . Continue Reading »

Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s The Light of Christ is a most unusual combination of literary humility and splendid erudition. Continue Reading »