#firstthings

America’s Empty Confessionals In the ​latest installment of the ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein, James M. O’Toole joins in to discuss his recent book, For I Have Sinned: The... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/americas-empty-confessionals/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Technology Against Education In the ​latest installment of the ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein, Thomas Varacalli joins in to discuss education in the age of AI. The conversation is embedded... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/technology-against-education/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Who Paces the AI Frontier? Dario Amodei wants to give society time to deliberate about artificial intelligence. I am not qualified to judge the merits of the head of Anthropic’s proposal, made in his... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/who-paces-the-ai-frontier/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Creedal Orthodoxy Won’t Save Us Pundits tell us that we are moving beyond the culture wars. Left and right are merging in their common judgment that liberalism has reached a dead end. Something new... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/creedal-orthodoxy-wont-save-us/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Orthodoxy #Christian

Living Humanae Vitae in Poland Humanae vitae remains alive, if not entirely well, fifty-eight years after its promulgation. When Pope Paul VI released the encyclical reinforcing the Church’s prohibition on artificial forms of birth... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/living-humanae-vitae-in-poland/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Church #Christian

The England I Knew Is Gone Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-england-i-knew-is-gone/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

The Man Who Built the Trojan Horse Tourism makes fact seem fiction. I feel confident Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and I believe it is a great portrait, until I get to the room... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-man-who-built-the-trojan-horse/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Classics v. Classics The furious debate about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey has revealed an unexpected fact: Many people take Homer seriously, very seriously. Modifying the canonical epic in the least detail, it appears,... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/classics-v-classics/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

The Summer Reading List: 2026 A 2025 YouGov poll revealed some interesting factoids about Americans’ reading habits—or lack thereof. Forty percent of us didn’t read a book last year. About a quarter of the... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-summer-reading-list-2026/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

The Sun Also Rises at 100 The Hemingway style—terse, direct, formidable, in both prose and personal deportment—dominated American literature and the native ideal of manliness for much of the twentieth century. His suicide in 1961,... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-sun-also-rises-at-100/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Who Gets Custody of the Latin Mass? In any messy breakup, there are the inevitable conflagrations over custody of the kids, the dog, the vinyl collection. The parting of ways between the Catholic Church and the... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/who-gets-custody-of-the-latin-mass/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Mass #Church

How the Press Lost Public Trust In the ​latest installment of the ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein, Tara Henley joins in to discuss her recent book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-trust-spiral/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

My Four Years at St. John’s College Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind. —William Wordsworth, “Ode on... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/my-four-years-at-st-johns-college/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Saint #John

The Critic as Artist In this episode, Dana Gioia joins R. R. Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about his most recent piece for Portico, “The Last of the Lost Generation.” The... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-critic-as-artist/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Ukraine and the Limits of Dialogue For months now, I have been receiving alarming, early-morning text messages from Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halyč, leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The texts are typically... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/ukraine-and-the-limits-of-dialogue/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Bishop #Church

The Founders and the Common Good The dominant public philosophy among American elites is modern liberalism, often referred to merely as “liberalism.” Two beliefs make up liberalism’s core: first, that freedom is, in the words... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-founders-and-the-common-good/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

A Rudderless Odyssey There is much to like about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. The movie is visually stunning; the set pieces, from the fall of Troy to the slaughter of the suitors, can... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/a-rudderless-odyssey/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

Malta’s Answer to the Abortion Lobby For almost a decade, abortion activists have had the small Mediterranean country of Malta in their crosshairs. Malta is the European Union’s last pro-life haven; abortion is illegal unless... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/maltas-answer-to-the-abortion-lobby/ #Catholic #FirstThings #ProLife #Christian

The Dot, The Dash, and Everything Between In the ​latest installment of the ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein, Florence Hazrat joins in to discuss her recent book, On the Mark: From Periods to... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/the-dot-the-dash-and-everything-between/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian

All Labor Is Labor The Elizabethan commonplace comparing creative production to pregnancy and birth is baked into the English language. We “conceive” an idea, though some prove “abortive.” A new project or business... 🔗 https://firstthings.com/all-labor-is-labor/ #Catholic #FirstThings #Christian