Letters

BURNING BRIDGES I would like to thank First Things for the kind invitation to respond to Fr. Paul Mankowski’s review of my book Building a Bridge (“Pontifex Minimus,” August/September). Sadly, I found the review almost entirely divorced from the experience of the majority of LGBT Catholics in . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

SACRAMENTS, NOT SWEETS James Zacchaeus’s story (“Thanks for Everything, Pope Francis,” June/July) is a testimony to what can result when a Catholic couple treats Christ’s commandments on marriage as divine guidance requiring obedience for their own good rather than an unachievable ideal . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

No Authority As a practicing general pediatrician, I appreciated Dr. Leonard Sax’s article “Don’t Ask the Kids” in the October issue of First Things. Sax makes some very helpful suggestions for parents struggling to raise respectful children, but his emphasis is misplaced in advocating . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Culture I recently read Jonathan Price’s “Culture by Subtraction” (February) and thoroughly enjoyed it—not least because it grants the rather respectable name of “cultural habit” to what has so far been called my countrymen’s “arrogance”! When reading, I could not help wondering . . . . Continue Reading »

An Epistolary Romp through Catholicism

In 2003, Elizabeth Maguire, publisher of Basic Books, made a proposal: I should write Letters to a Young Catholic as part of a series she was doing that included volumes like Letters to a Young Contrarian, Letters to a Young Chef, Letters to a Young Golfer, Letters to a Young Lawyer, and so forth. . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Reward R. R. Reno reports that there’s a $10,000 reward for anyone who can change Sam Harris’s mind about strict materialism (“Rewriting Nature’s Laws,” May). I’ve read just a few sentences of Harris’s work, and all of it attempted to persuade. Of course if . . . . Continue Reading »