Recently archbishop of Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley published on his archdiocesan website a list of the names of priests accused of the sexual abuse of children. Accompanying the list was a letter that carefully explains the rationale for his decision. Cardinal O’Malley indicates that he is deeply concerned about the tragedy of sexual abuse and hopes to ensure that it is “never repeated in the Church.” … Continue Reading »
Two large, sunken pools, fed by what the official literature describes as the largest man-made waterfall in North America, drain into central shafts meant, it seems, to conjure the infinite abyss of death and loss. They are rimmed with bronze panels into which are inscribed the names of those who died a decade ago. The rest of the grounds of the 9/11 Memorial are filled with trees and stone benches. … Continue Reading »
Whenever secular liberals are challenged on one of their latest innovations in ethics, their reply almost invariably goes something like this: “Well, if you are opposed to same-sex marriage, then marry someone of the opposite sex.” Or: “If you are so against abortion, then don’t have one.” In other words, in the immortal words of Rodney King, why can’t we all just get along? I’ll let you have your morality if you let me have mine… . Continue Reading »
It’s an age of widespread cultural and ecclesial malaise: the State encroaches ever more into the affairs of the church; the clergy is indolent and ineffective, oft corrupt and unchaste; the laity is poorly catechized; and Gnosticism advances. It’s the twelfth century, into which a Teutonic prophetess stepped, prepared to confront the spirits of the age with visions from on high… . Continue Reading »
What does it mean for Catholicism when young Catholics gather from around the world to hear Pope Benedict XVI celebrate Mass, as 1.5. million of them did Sunday, August 21 in Madrid for World Youth Day? Veteran Vatican-watcher John Allen argued in a DePaul University talk last April that the most significant trend in Catholicism today is the recovery of traditional markers of Catholic identity, practice, and language by engaged young Catholics. … Continue Reading »
The great English statesman, Sir Thomas More, is often and justly revered as the patron of conscience rights. Despite a lifetime of faithful and diligent service to King Henry VIII, More’s silent opposition to the Act of Supremacy led to his eventual and famous execution at Tower Hill on 6 July, 1535. Unknown to many who celebrate More’s fateful silence, however, is the same man’s ardent defense of free speech”a defense that first came to the fore, quite appropriately, during More’s tenure as Speaker of the House of Commons, some twelve years before his death… . Continue Reading »
With the end of summer comes the official election season, the beginning of a thirteen month stretch in which the public must endure Republican candidates droning on about Social Security, political pundits blabbering about tax cuts, and leftist journalists screeching about the impending theocracy. Although they have been repeating the same warnings since the mid-1980s, the leftist theophobes are certain that this is finally the year when the theonomists storm the National Archives and replace the Bill of Rights with the Ten Commandments… . Continue Reading »
Almost 40 years ago, an aging Anglican clergyman told me a story about his first trip to Paris as a boy”perhaps in the 1920s. His grandfather had called him in, told him that he had a gift to be used in the French capital, and then gave my friend a small pocket mirror. The boy, puzzled, asked his grandfather what the mirror might be for. The following dialogue ensued … Continue Reading »
At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Robert Kennedy”finding kinship with a doomed heroine of fiction”referenced the loss of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, by quoting Shakespeare’s Juliet: “When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” During the wake and funeral of my own beloved brother, that imagery kept bubbling up through my awareness, and it comforted me… . Continue Reading »
Last Friday saw the opening of Warrior, a Mixed Martial Arts film that turns out to be about something else: a fierce-yet-muted struggle between a father, Paddy, and his grown sons, Brendan and Tommy. It stars Tom Hardy (late of Inception and soon to be seen as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises), Joel Edgerton, and the redoubtable Nick Nolte, and it’s tracking 84 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes… . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
