I’ll be at the Sheen Center in Manhattan tonight talking with Sohrab Ahmari about his book on faith, From Fire by Water. Details here — join us if you’re in town and able.

Today is the sixth anniversary of Pope Francis’s election as pope. I was in St. Peter’s Square that night. I remain most struck by how he asked for prayers. He would repeat that again and again. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of what we’re seeing in the Church in the world would look different if believers took prayer more seriously — even more seriously than having an opinion on every matter under the sun. Before every thought, word, and action. And in gratitude.


What’s wrong with the world? Maybe really communicating the desire for true faith — total trust in God alone — may be a start. It would start to put to death our unbelief and hypocrisies, putting us on the road to true conversion to Beatitudinal living of the sort that the world needs.

1. Thomas Hibbs, a longtime writer for National Review and this website, is the new president of the University of Dallas.

2. George Weigel on the Vatican and Australia’s Cardinal Pell



3. John Allen: Will Pell be abuse crisis’s Eichmann, Count of Monte Cristo or Rosenbergs?

4. Arthur Brooks and the Dalai Lama

5. A conversation about the Bladensburg cross case before the Supreme Court

6. Bethany Mandel’s love letter to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

7. I read this story about a mother leaving her child at the airport and the plane turning around and wondered in a domestic air situation if the plane actually would.

8.

Psssst. Psssst. Hey parents! It's me. Over here. Now don't let on to anyone that I'm the one who let you in on the secret. I don't want to lose my job. But . . . Your terrific kid is a terrific kid WHETHER OR NOT he gets into Princeton (or Yale or Stanford). #thekidsarealright — Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) March 12, 2019

9.

What if kids in Christian families grew up thinking it was a standard part of their faith/life to adopt children w/ no families into theirs? How would things change for orphans in the next generation? What if welcoming the stranger was a concrete action not a sentimental slogan? — Kelly Rosati (@KellyMRosati) March 10, 2019

10.

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”#CSLewis — C. S. Lewis (@CSLewisDaily) March 13, 2019

PLUS: The National Review Institute has an internship program and the application deadline is approaching at the end of this week. Details here.