I miss Ash Wednesday, the Western liturgical churches’ entry into Lent. The ashes on the forehead in the shape of the Cross, the important reminder that we are mortal: “Dust you were and dust you shall be.” We don’t have that wonderful tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy, to . . . . Continue Reading »
If you happen to be reading Moby Dick right now, and you live in Washington, DC, congratulations! The Kennedy Center is putting on an opera. Go see it (it closes tomorrow). If you don’t live in DC, however, and you live in some benighted cultural desert (like New York City) then nobody is . . . . Continue Reading »
I’d like to explain our new approach to publishing First Things online. First, we give away at least three articles every month, as we did in the past. There’s been no change in that policy. We want to engage readers as much as possible. Continue Reading »
Fred Siegel’s new book, Revolt Against the Masses, presents the story of a group of liberal elites who felt marginalized, bored, and under-appreciated by the broad run of America’s business groups, civic organizations, and religious traditions. Continue Reading »
Lumping together the recently attempted Arizona religious freedom law with new criminal laws against homosexuality in Nigeria and Uganda, the United Methodist Church’s Capitol Hill lobby lamented that “legislation that denies the human rights of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and . . . . Continue Reading »
Three white leopards open the second movement of T. S. Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday. What they are supposed to represent is anyone’s guess: the Holy Trinity; the three sins of avarice, gluttony, and lust; the divine agents of destruction that occasionally appear in the Old . . . . Continue Reading »
The Victorian poet Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) is most celebrated for her popular Christmas carols, but her most prolific liturgical season was Lent. A fervent Anglican, Rossetti expressed in her poems a deeper understanding of suffering than pieces like “Love Came Down At Christmas” might lead you to suspect. In her Lenten poetry, she focuses not only on her own sins, but highlights how her intense brokenness united her to God. Continue Reading »
Half an hour before sunrise on Ash Wednesday, hundreds of English-speakers from all over Rome will begin walking to the ancient basilica of St. Sabina on the Aventine Hill. They’ll start from student residences, from embassies to Italy and the Holy See, and from the Vatican. The Schwerpunkt, . . . . Continue Reading »
At the urging of a couple of friends who had recently read it for the first time, I reread (after about thirty years) Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s modern classic A Canticle for Leibowitz. It was far better than I appreciated its being in my younger days (oh, for a nickel every time I realize how . . . . Continue Reading »
Rock and roll has a rebellious sound. I write that hesitantly, because there is really no such thing as rock and roll, in terms of having a permanent nature or ongoing essence. Speed, loudness, and distorted acoustical effects do not a musical genre make. Rock is a mishmash of various musical . . . . Continue Reading »
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