Matthew Schmitz

The Paris Statement decries the faux Christendom of democracy, but we will need more than local patriotism and recollection of Christian roots to combat it.  Continue Reading »

Evelyn Waugh understood that Christianity is not a matter of blood, or of race, or of victory in this world.  Continue Reading »

Catholics distinguish between violations of manners and of the moral law; Fr. James Martin, in ways trivial and grave, does not. Continue Reading »

Conversion—not ecclesial nativism—is the American Catholic tradition. Continue Reading »

When I last visited New Orleans, the Robert E. Lee Monument was being used as an altar. Two voodoo priestesses, turbans atop their heads, scattered gunpowder and grave dirt on the granite plinth. With splendid indifference to those who had erected the memorial, they summoned their gods through an . . . . Continue Reading »

First Things brings a sporting spirit to the intellectual life—a willingness to sweat, a belief in fair play, and the desire to win. Continue Reading »

Dispatches from the debate: Any left that is unable to see the way we are enslaved by lust will end up the unwitting handmaiden of those who exploit. Continue Reading »

Though Benedict is still living, Francis is trying to bury him. Continue Reading »

America’s national epic was not written in meter and verse. Nor, for that matter, was it written by an American. Yet The Pilgrim’s Progress is nonetheless the primal American story, the account of our mad flight from order and lonely quest for grace. Hemmed in by civilization, resentful of kin, . . . . Continue Reading »

Anna Stubblefield had dedicated much of her career to advocating for the “radical inclusion” of disabled persons—and given her principles, rape was the only way to do it. Continue Reading »