Nathaniel Peters

Since the February 2008 issue went online today, the December 2007 issue is now available for free to all who visit the website. Looking back, my favorite article from that issue was Fr. Neuhaus’s ” True Devotion to Mary ,” in which he identified excesses of Marian devotion and . . . . Continue Reading »

This blurb appears in the New York Times today: Plans to exhume the body of Padre Pio, left, Italy’s favorite saint, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death have been met with fierce opposition from followers . . . . Over the weekend, Archbishop Domenico Umberto D’Ambrosio . . . . Continue Reading »

After the Pope’s now-famous Regensburg Address, a group of scholars wrote a response whose signatories came to number 138 scholars and leaders in the Muslim world. This spring three of those scholars will travel to the Vatican to discuss “respect for the dignity of each person, . . . . Continue Reading »

True devotion to Mary, as Fr. Neuhaus recently reminded us , always points us to Christ. Like most converts to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, Marian devotion has taken some getting used to for me. I therefore found Frederica Mathewes-Green’s The Lost Gospel of Mary: The Mother of Jesus in Three . . . . Continue Reading »

Our beloved editor here at First Things has written on many topics, yet on no two has he expounded in greater depth and at greater length than Christmas and death . Apparently many residents of the Great State of California have decided to combine the two. Scholars who study this sort of thing . . . . Continue Reading »

The cover story of this week’s New York Times science section asks the question of the nature of the laws of nature. It’s a fascinating article. First we see Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University who, on the Times’ editorial page asserted that all of science . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times has a funny article not on a devotional practice, but on the consequences of a devotional practice. As we all know, devout Muslims pray five times a day in the direction of Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. The news regularly runs footage of crowds kneeling in . . . . Continue Reading »

Last year a good friend introduced me to a song that has become my new favorite Christmas carol. It’s also the shortest one I’ve ever heard, at just over a minute long. According to Wikipedia , “Adam Lay Ybounden” is a 15th century song attributed to an anonymous wandering . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times today has an interesting article , which talks about a prayer service held late at night for the express purpose of spiritual warfare. The students, taxicab drivers, homemakers and entrepreneurs, all Christians, mostly from French-speaking Africa, attend a midnight service four . . . . Continue Reading »

Tucked away down the street from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia sits an unassuming brown Romanesque church. This church is the parish of St. Clement’s, a small community of Anglo-Catholics who are dedicated to the beauty and fullness of the Western liturgy, all with the help of a . . . . Continue Reading »