If you have paid any attention at all to the current and ever-livelier dialogue between the LGBT movement and the Christian community, you have no doubt heard the question being asked of Christians everywhere: Do you realize how bigoted your views are? This is of course a trick question, and Christians are not doing themselves any favors by trying so hard to answer it… . Continue Reading »
Should Catholics sing hymns at Mass? Given the state of Catholic liturgical music, it’s a fair question. In the last century, Catholics exchanged their musical solid food for milk”usually skim and on the edge of going sour. Hymns at Mass are a recent addition to the liturgy… . Continue Reading »
Richard Dawkins recently attracted attention for his admission that his atheism was more properly a scientific agnosticism. This admission, though it caught the notice of the media, was not really anything new for Dawkins, who has made similar concessions in the past… . Continue Reading »
In Paul’s eschatology, Christians living at the Lord’s return will be swept up in Christ and the dead in fact will be the first to participate in the grand trumpet-call summons to resurrection. “Console one another,” Paul laconically concludes, “with these words.” I am trying, but what I hear isn’t helping. I was told again a week ago at my father’s funeral”I’ve heard this now in one version or another at four funerals within the last three years and, truly, I am weary of hearing it”that “we all know where X is; he is in a better place.” … Continue Reading »
Thirty-some years ago, I spent a fair amount of time on religious freedom issues; which meant, in those simpler days, trying to pry Lithuanian priests and nuns out of Perm Camp 36 and other GULAG islands. Had you told me in 1982 that one of my “clients,” the Jesuit Sigitas Tamkevicius, would be archbishop of Kaunas in a free Lithuania in 2012, I would have thought you a bit optimistic. If you had also told me, back then, that there would eventually be serious religious freedom problems in the United States, I would have thought you a bit mad… . Continue Reading »
I recently read a review of a book about Margaret Thatcher which argued that: “Thatcher… . wanted to restore the balance of virtues in Britain away from current sentimentalities such as compassion and toward the ‘vigorous virtues’ of courage and enterprise.” What struck me about the remark is that virtues can become their own enemies unless they are counterbalanced with other virtues… . Continue Reading »
Ameritopia, a work of pop-political theory by talk radio host Mark Levin, has been riding high atop the New York Times bestseller list for the past several weeks. The book, as Andrew McCarthy recounts in an extended essay/review appearing in this month’s New Criterion, centers around the thesis that all societies (and so, by extension, America today) face a basic choice between “utopianism” and “realism.” McCarthy praises Levin’s thesis, but his enthusiasm is a bit surprising given how inchoate Levin’s argument sounds… . Continue Reading »
On February 27th and 28th some twenty scholars, as well as First Things editors and assorted auditors, met to discuss the question of whether liberalism has a future”and what comes after liberalism. Three essays served as foci for the seminar, and they will be featured in upcoming issues of First Things. Wilfred McClay’s essay, “Liberal Institutions Without Liberal Theories” will appear in the May issue along with responses by Yuval Levin and James Rogers… . Continue Reading »
By mid-eighteenth century, two religious titans of the Anglo-Saxon world, erstwhile allies, were at loggerheads over the question of just how many people were destined for an eternity in hell. George Whitefield attacked John Wesley in 1740 for asserting “God’s grace is free to all.” … Continue Reading »
To many Americans, business appears to inhabit a morally murky world where good is evil and evil good. I’m not talking about sweatshops, bribery of government officials, or cooking the books. Even the normal norms of business seem, to many, to violate the norms we adhere to elsewhere… . Continue Reading »
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