Nathaniel Peters

From the “All Things to All People Department,” I give you the Paschal Mystery Machine . . . . . Continue Reading »

A friend of mine sent along a charming medieval Christmas carol , the first one I’ve encountered about the flight into Egypt. Orientis partibus adventavit asinus pulcher et fortissimus sarcinis aptissimus In eastern lands the ass arrived handsome and strong, fit for burden Hey, sir asne, hey! . . . . Continue Reading »

Seeing as Advent is a penitential season, and seeing as I’ve been talking about Advent music, here’s a penitential song. Well, sort of. It’s not exactly sacred, at least in traditional terms, but it is callled “Sinner’s Prayer.” And it’s covered by B.B. . . . . Continue Reading »

My friend Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P. has more on Advent hymns at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer’s blog , including lovely recordings. Here’s a slight digression in the conversation about hymns. At some point in high school or college you learn the trick of putting the phrase “in . . . . Continue Reading »

In the past year, I’ve enjoyed finding recordings of authors reading their own material online. Some voices sound the way I expected— Tolkein’s , for example—and some did not— Lewis’ , for example. I can’t say I expected Chesterton to sound the way he did, but . . . . Continue Reading »

On the topic of Advent hymns and carols , here’s “The King Shall Come” by Michael Linton, a frequent FT contributor. The piece is conducted by Mary Hopper at the Wheaton Illinois Christmas Festival. . . . . Continue Reading »

Advent is chock full of good hymns: ” On Jordan’s Bank The Baptist’s Cry ,” ” Come Thou Long Expected Jesus ,” ” O Come, O Come Emmanuel ,” and many more. But my favorite, hands down, is “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending.” I have many . . . . Continue Reading »

The assistant editors of First Things have back-to-back book reviews in Touchstone . Last month I wrote on three books describing the hook-up culture on college campuses. The article’s now available online , and here’s a sample: One student she interviewed talks about a girl who calls . . . . Continue Reading »

From Fr. George Rutler’s weekly column in the bulletin of the Church of Our Saviour, this time on removing references to God in our culture: It would be easy to exploit this out of demagoguery, and some politicians do indeed like to pose righteously protesting against “the removal of . . . . Continue Reading »

Around the office, one of our favorite pieces to have published is ” The Giving Tree : A Symposium ,” in which we asked various contributors to comment on Shel Silverstein’s story. It appears that someone else has a retelling of the story , one in which the tree is not quite as . . . . Continue Reading »