This week marks the thirty-first anniversary of John Lennon’s death”as good a time as any to analyze our enduring fascination with the former Beatle’s peculiar religiosity and his lasting impact on our cultural imagination. We should begin at the beginning, or very near it. In August 1966, as a mop-topped 26-year-old, Lennon told a British reporter that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” … Continue Reading »
Tim Tebow, the outspoken young quarterback of the Denver Broncos, is the talk of the nation: He has won six out of his last seven games, several in spectacular fashion. Yet, because of his overt faith, many in the media seem to relish his every mistake with more than a tinge of anti-Christian malice. Other players criticize and scoff at him: Two Detroit Lions players recently knelt in mockery of him during a game, one after sacking Tebow for a loss and the other after scoring a touchdown… . Continue Reading »
During his homily at the Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice [for the election of the Roman Pontiff] on April 18, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cautioned his fellow-cardinals that John Paul II’s successor would have to deal with an emerging “dictatorship of relativism” throughout the western world: the use of coercive state power to impose an agenda of dramatic moral deconstruction on all of society… . Continue Reading »
It was perhaps a year or so after the terror attacks of 9/11, during the debates over the Patriot Act. I was reading comment threads in a right-leaning political forum, and noted one woman who vociferously objected to the legislation. She was a “stalwart conservative” and a bit of a rugged individualist”she could shoot a gun and dress a kill (if I had known of Sarah Palin’s existence at the time, I’d have favorably compared the two)”and her concerns about the legislation were sound… . Continue Reading »
During the First World War, the British, including two Jewish battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, conquered the Ottoman-ruled Land of Israel (then known as Palestine). After the war, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate for the establishment of a Jewish national home there. While the Jewish community grew under British rule, Britain also became less than enthusiastic about a Jewish national home… . Continue Reading »
A fortnight ago I made the case that the social democratic project in the West is under stress and may come unraveled. This does not mean I think it was a mistake. On the contrary, it was a brilliant achievement in its day. During the dark years of the Great Depression neither democracy nor free market capitalism seemed likely to survive. Fascism and Communism presented themselves as the only truly modern approaches to political and economic life, and their followers strutted, arrogantly confident that the future was theirs… . Continue Reading »
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” We miss the full force of John’s Advent announcement if we understand “flesh” as “body” or “human nature.” In the Bible, flesh names a particular quality of human life. It is Scripture’s global term for the physical and moral condition of postlapsarian existence… . Continue Reading »
Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebellius has issued regulations requiring private health plans to cover contraceptives (including some abortifacients). Against the USCCB’s charge that this requirement is wrong and that the exemptions from this requirement are too narrow to protect religious liberty, Doug Kmiec defends the administration”unsuccessfully… . Continue Reading »
Last year’s November publication of Light of the World, the book length interview with Pope Benedict XVI by Peter Seewald, set off a media frenzy over claims that the Catholic Church had changed its position on condoms. Critics of Church teaching quickly used the occasion to remark that the archaic institution just might be catching up to the rest of the world, while some ill-informed Catholics began to fear that the elderly Pope might be suffering an onset of dementia and was single-handedly reversing Church teaching on sexual ethics. The truth, however, is that the Roman pontiff was doing neither of those things. One year later, on the occasion of World AIDS Day, I believe it’s helpful to revisit just what the Pope had to say about condom usage and the HIV/AIDS crisis and how we can best respond… . Continue Reading »
Michael Kinsley’s recent Bloomberg View column, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer as “Bishops are not exactly oppressed” (Nov. 23), makes a number of basic mistakes concerning law as it relates to religious freedom that we, as lawyers and law professors, wish to correct. Kinsley begins by usefully calling attention to the recent warnings by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia that there is a drive by some to marginalize religion. … Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
