Free Republic

This is my closing address at the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee held last week in Arlington, Virginia.Once again this year, the National Right to Life convention is partly a reunion of veterans from battles past and partly a youth rally of those recruited for the battles to come. And that is just what it should be. The pro-life movement that began in the 20th century laid the foundation for the pro-life movement of the 21st century. We have been at this a long time, and we are just getting started. All that has been...

On January 8, 2009, Richard John Neuhaus, 72, the intellectual force behind an influential coalition between Catholics and Protestants passed away after a long battle with cancer. A Lutheran pastor who converted to Catholicism in 1990 a priest in 1991, Neuhaus served as the president of The Institute on Religion and Public Life, the conservative think tank that publishes First Things magazine. Neuhaus was active in liberal politics until Roe v. Wade was handed down. His view on the importance of upholding religious orthodoxy is sumarized by “Neuhaus’s Law”, which states that “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or...

Philip Jenkins begs to differ. But first a word on the discussion that prompts his dissent. Over the years, FIRST THINGS has devoted substantial attention to the thesis that Europe is a dying continent. In the fine phrase of David Hart, Europe is dying of “metaphysical boredom.” We were among the first to give a sympathetic hearing to the work of Bat Y’eor, who argues that Europe is, probably irreversibly, on the way to becoming “Eurabia.” Catastrophically low birth rates, combined with a burgeoning Muslim population, led the sage Bernard Lewis to comment in 2004: “Current trends show that Europe...

More and more, I wonder whether lefties mean it, any of it. Take Rosie O’Donnell. The other day, one of her co-hosts on “The View” was musing on current events and opined, “If you take radical Islam and you want to talk about what is going on there you have to…” And at this point Rosie interrupted. “One second. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state.” Does she really believe that? That “radical Christianity” is “just as threatening” as “radical Islam”? These terms are...

Richard John Neuhaus writes: This is but an addendum to Robert Miller?s fine reflection on the meaning of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is not easy. It is a very deliberate and specific practice that takes some working at. To cite a recent instance, the revelation that German novelist G?nter Grass?lauded for years as the conscience of his country?willingly served in the Waffen-SS may qualify as hypocrisy. For decades he relentlessly insisted that anyone tainted by Nazism should be excluded from the moral community of public discourse, knowing all along that he was complicit in what he condemned in others. He was lying....

This essay asks two questions: Are Europeans in the throes of passive cultural and political suicide as they ignore the threat of fanatical Muslims in their communities? And if so, have the leaders of the Democratic Party in America joined the Europeans in sleepwalking towards a precipice? My main source for answering the first question is a book review titled Suicide of the West, by Theodore Dalrymple which appeared in the Clairmont Review of Books, Fall 2006. Dalrymple reviewed three books in pursuit of his theme of the "Suicide of the West" — namely, Why the Continent's Crisis is America's...

(abridged version) Herewith a potpourri of reflections on the Regensburg lecture by Pope Benedict and reactions to it, intermixed with a bit of my own commentary. As many commentators, Muslim and other, do not know because they manifestly have not read the lecture, it was not chiefly about Islam. It was a considered reflection on the inseparable linkage of faith and reason in the Christian understanding, an incisive critique of Christian thinkers who press for separating faith and reason in the name of “de-Hellenizing” Christianity, and a stirring call for Christians to celebrate the achievements of modernity and secure those...