Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

The Lay Reform of Church and World

Two volumes recently published by Encounter Books address key issues in the New Evangelization. The first, Marcello Pera’s Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians, is another effort by a distinguished public intellectual to call our civilization back to its foundational senses. Pera, a philosopher of science, is also an Italian legislator who served for several years as president of the Italian Senate… . Continue Reading »

Madison Avenue’s Vision of Love

The only good thing about watching your baseball team get eliminated in the post-season is that, after launching a frustrated shoe at the television, one is excused from having to endure repeated viewings of the detestable little playlets written by Madison Avenue cynics who”perhaps due to the bad economy”have decided to eschew psychotherapy in favor of working out their relationship issues and general neurosis on the rest of us… . Continue Reading »

Martin Sheen Goes to Compostela

Walking through Europe, one finds the relics of Christianity. Not relics in the Christian sense of the term”the cherished remains of the beloved dead, the things that make real our connection to the believers who have gone before”but in the literal sense of the Latin: relicta, things that have been left behind, abandoned, or forsaken. The monastery has become a museum filled with placards that don’t quite know what to make of the former occupants… . Continue Reading »

Receiving a Pope and a President

Within only a few hours on September 22, Pope Benedict XVI and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave major addresses in front of two bodies, the German Bundestag and the United Nations General Assembly, respectively. These two very different men gave two very different speeches, yet their presence and words generated an identical response: boycotts and walk-outs by assembly members… . Continue Reading »

A Lutheran Reflects on Benedict XVI’s German Visit

When the door was closed on the meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the leaders of the German Lutheran Church on September 23rd, 2011, for some in the USA it signaled the possibility of an open door to reunification while, for others, it signaled the need to nail another Ninety-Five Theses (or more) to the doors of our churches while shouting, papam esse ipsum verum antichristum. … Continue Reading »

Benedict in Germany, Confronting Modernity

One the eve of Benedict’s recent trip to his German homeland, Der Spiegel ran a predictable story with the title Der Unbelehrbare”The Unteachable One”complete with an unflattering cover shot of the Pope. The piece presented the routine critique made by many Germans: this Pope refuses to accommodate the faith to the obvious truths of modernity; in his obstinacy or ignorance, he either won’t or can’t learn… . Continue Reading »

Anesthetizing America’s Conscience

As readers may know, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to require every health insurer in the land to pay for, and thus to be complicit in, the provision of contraceptives, including some that would be more accurately described as abortifacients. The rule offers a potential exception on religious grounds, but this “exemption,” as previously discussed by Christopher T. Haley, Ryan Anderson, and others on this website, is exceedingly narrow and inadequate. … Continue Reading »

Notre Dame Has Yet To Learn Its Lesson

Last week, Notre Dame’s president, Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius imploring her to enact more robust conscience protections in the forthcoming HHS regulations for preventive services coverage under the new health care law. It’s important that conscience protections be much broader than even what Fr. Jenkins calls for, but it is good that he spoke up on the issue… . Continue Reading »

Does the Sun Rise?

About this time each year, I survey my theology students on the question, “Does the sun rise?” Most say, No. This year, one said it’s “super-obvious” that the sun does not rise. They fall into nervous silence when I insist that it does. The occasion for my survey is an annual discussion of Galileo’s famous 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. During a dinner party with the Grand Duchess, Benedictine friar Benedetto Castelli defended the new heliocentric theory and refuted the Scriptural arguments that another member of the party advanced in favor of geocentricity… . Continue Reading »

A New Translation and an Old Fight

For most Protestants in America, “Church shopping” has become a staple of religious life, and this is no less true for Catholics, on the parish level at least. Once the shopping is done, we settle into our regular communities, and have very little experience of the different ways our co-religionists practice the faith. We go in peace to love and serve the Lord, each in our own worlds. Often our decisions of parish are driven by aesthetics, such as taste in music. For my own part, I will admit that the sight of a drum kit in a church stops me cold and that any music written by a certain “Marty” presents me with a near occasion of sin… . Continue Reading »

Tags

Loading...

Filter Web Exclusive Articles