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** Daily Newsletter: DECEMBER 16, 2025
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** In today’s newsletter:
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ERIK VARDEN: In Praise of Translation ([link removed])

KARI JENSON GOLD: I’ll Be Home for Christmas? ([link removed])

Today in the First Things daily newsletter, the 2026 Erasmus Lecture: “In Praise of Translation.” The world’s many languages are not barriers to be overcome but different worlds to navigate.

Also, how the value of home has been sacrificed on the altar of self-actualization.
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** In Praise of Translation ([link removed])
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** Erik Varden
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From the January issue: To explain oneself is to engage with the world as a logical being, fulfilling one of God’s first commandments: to name. In the age of Google Translate and AI, Bishop Erik Varden praises the multiplicity of languages as different worlds of expression rather than barriers to communication. In his reading, the aftermath of the Tower of Babel is “not so much punishment as respite. Relieved of megalomaniac obsession, man is forced to look around. Once again he notices, lo! the mountains and plains, the blue sea and starry skies. He recalls what he, creation’s spokesman, owes them.”

He continues, “To translate is not to domesticate the unknown in known terms. It is to renounce the certainty that I am the knowing insider while everyone else is outside. When one does this, something new can be said.”

This essay was delivered as the 2026 Erasmus Lecture. Watch the lecture below:

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** I’ll Be Home for Christmas? ([link removed])
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** Kari Jenson Gold
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A recent piece in the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column called “The Case for Ending a Long, Mostly Good Marriage” has solicited a flurry of negative attention. Kari Jenson Gold writes that the “piece is so grotesque and has elicited such a strong response because she exploded not only a marriage, but a home, and for such trivial reasons.” The desire for home is one of the deepest motivations in literature, beginning with Odysseus’ long return to Ithaca in the Odyssey.

For further reading: On the topic of home, Gold wrote how appetite-suppressing weight loss drugs transgress the laws of hospitality in April’s “The Night Ozempic Came to Dinner ([link removed]) .”

Upcoming Events
* February 1, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida: “Recovering the University’s Soul” ft. Bishop Robert Barron | Sarasota, FL. Register here ([link removed]) .

* March 7, 2026: Annual D.C. Lecture: “Our Crisis is Metaphysical” ft. Mary Harrington | Washington, D.C. Details coming soon.

Until next time,


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VIRGINIA AABRAM
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Newsletter Editor
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