The poet Samuel Menashe (whose work been printed many times in the pages of First Things) died in his sleep on August 22nd, at the age of 85. As the obituaries and tributes have noted, he had been the recipient of the first “Neglected Masters Award” from the Poetry Foundation in 2004, with his New and Selected Poems then being published by the Library of America… . Continue Reading »
Remember the 1990s? They brought forth a variety of PC versions of the Bible. Back in the day, they were stunning; although admittedly, these first-generation programs were clunky, and little more than electronic texts of the Bible, marketed to the busy pastor or motivated Bible student. Gradually, speedier processors allowed for more features, including word study, and some graphics, such as maps of biblical lands, etc… . Continue Reading »
From the time of Adam and Eve until the late 1970s, there was”with one notable exception”only one way to make a baby: the sexual bonding of a man and a woman. That number increased to two in 1978 after the birth of Louise Brown, the first “test tube baby.” Today, there are thirty-eight ways to make a baby, almost all of which can be accomplished without sexual intercourse. … Continue Reading »
In the flood of commentary surrounding the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I found but one reference to a related anniversary of considerable importance: the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture. That lecture, given the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at the pope’s old university in Germany, identified the two key challenges to 21st-century Islam, if that faith of over a billion people is going to live within today’s world in something other than a condition of war… . Continue Reading »
It was 2003. Eight innings into yet-another nail-biter of a series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, there came a guttural wail from the stands at Fenway Park. “For the love of God . . .” It was one lone voice; a man—whose sound was remarkably reminiscent of the late Chris Farley at his most passionately unhinged—was seated close enough to the announcer’s booth that his agony was picked up and broadcast in New York . . . . Continue Reading »
Much of the animosity felt by older theologians toward the Vatican or, more generally, toward episcopal authority, has disappeared. Such skirmishes that do occasionally play out the old ‘free-thinking theologian’ versus the ‘heavy-handed bishop’ script simply bore. To young eyes media events dramatizing the conflict between freedom and authority look tired, and to be a pastime for the retiring… . Continue Reading »
Whether one believes it is of divine or secular origin, the papacy’s impact on human history has been remarkable. Because its legacy has been so rich and varied, however, it is a challenge to write a full-length history. Most authors can’t master a single pontificate, let alone all 265. Many who make the effort fail. The latest is John Julius Norwich, author of Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy… . Continue Reading »
A major reason I became Catholic concerned the Church’s profound theology of the Eucharist, which I (as a New Testament scholar) found squared well with the biblical witness, once certain modern lenses fell like scales from my eyes. Paul speaks of our real participation in the body and blood of Christ as that which unites the Church (1 Corinthians 10:16-17) and soon thereafter remarks that some of the Corinthians have fallen infirm and dropped over dead because of their eating and drinking unworthily (11:27-32)… . Continue Reading »
Strange things are afoot among the intellectuals. Neo-Marxists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri see the world divided into oppressive Empire and the resistant Multitude, and take inspiration from Saint Augustine’s two cities. Slavoj Zizek, who hailed Hardt and Negri’s 2000 book Empire as the “Communist Manifesto of the twenty-first century,” can’t stop quoting Chesterton. You can’t join the club of Continental deep thinkers nowadays unless you have published a book on the apostle Paul. Not that any of them actually believe any of it, but radicals have got religion… . Continue Reading »
In his September 1, 2011 column “Gay and Christian,” Russell Saltzman addressed my article in the New Oxford Review, in which I sketched a brief history of homosexual politics over the past two and a half millennia as a background for understanding the present controversy. I wrote that: “It is an uncomfortable fact that for a long time a campaign of hatred and persecution has been waged against those who experience same-sex attractions.” Saltzman takes issue with what he imagines to be an argument against the authority of St. Paul’s theological views on the morality of homosexuality… . Continue Reading »
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