The devoutly Catholic Bruckner dedicated his last symphony to “the dear God,” and prayed in his final illness that the Lord would allow him to finish his masterwork. In the event, his prayer was not granted. Yet in a deeper sense the three movements he lived to complete could hardly be surpassed. The sublime and harrowing third movement makes any further statement, this side of heaven, redundant! Continue Reading »
The First Things Podcast, Episode 22. Featuring: Donald Trump’s first week in office; and RIP William Peter Blatty, Catholic author of The Exorcist. Continue Reading »
Every so often, our readers send us pictures of their small but discerning offspring chewing their way through the latest issue of First Things. We proudly display these pictures on a bulletin board dedicated to celebrating the most junior members of the First Things family. Continue Reading »
A memorable account of a chance meeting between a pro-life journalist and a pro-abortion politician reveals much about the politics of personhood. Continue Reading »
Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, tweets that, “Theology is not #Mathematics. 2 + 2 in #Theology can make 5. Because it has to do with #God and real #life of #people.” Whence the desire to separate God from the unchanging truth of math?Continue Reading »
For most of his career, Starr viewed the California experiment benevolently, as a phenomenon balanced between utopia and reason. But he was an intense Catholic believer who seems finally to have despaired of California’s grandiloquent and heartbreaking destiny. Continue Reading »