On the day my family moved into our home in Northern Virginia, we found a bottle of champagne with a card from the sellers affixed. They congratulated us on our purchase—a fixer-upper with a jungle of a backyard—and told us how much they had loved the neighborhood. “And be sure to make . . . . Continue Reading »
When the nineteen-year-old Joan of Arc was told she would be burned at the stake, she reacted with horror—not for the reasons you or I might give, but on more mysterious grounds. According to the Dominican friar Jean Toutmouillé, who visited her at the prison in Rouen on the morning of May . . . . Continue Reading »
At first glance, it seems odd that a major academic publisher should commission a volume on, as it were, the phenomenology of religious life. Insofar as they are perceptible at all, religious have retreated to the margins of our imaginative universe, as defendants in court cases, amiable extras in . . . . Continue Reading »
We live in paradoxical times. Over the last two generations, college students, especially at top-ranking universities, have been educated to believe that there is no transcendence. Human beings are a bundle of instincts, they’re told, or software in meat hardware, or some other reductive . . . . Continue Reading »
Classical education doesn’t need to justify itself anymore, though it exists in a frequently hostile environment. Continue Reading »
In the case of faithful servant George Pell, Jesus's words were proved shockingly true: “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you,” and also “Well done, good and trustworthy servant, come and join in your master’s happiness.” Continue Reading »
The American Church is the liveliest, most vital local Church in the developed world. Period. Continue Reading »
The young adults who flock to “Prayer, Penance, and Pub” find meaning, a reason to live, something their non-religious cohorts desire but haven’t found out in the world. Continue Reading »
I appreciated Mark Bauerlein’s recent essay “System’s Failure” (November 2023) on some of the many flaws in “systemic bias.” There is, however, a much easier way to dismiss the whole enterprise out of hand: when proponents are unwilling to start with the government’s K–12 education . . . . Continue Reading »
Sooner or later, every generation begins to look backward. Instead of blaming present woes on present-day opponents, writers past middle age take the longer view of their lives. Not too long ago, such retrospectives in the Catholic world were dominated by those who had watched the Church change from . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
