New York Governor Kathy Hochul said yesterday that she would sign a bill allowing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. In her announcement, she wrote that she was inspired to sign the bill when, at a Catholic funeral Mass, she was “taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be.” Fr. Brian A. Graebe breaks down this distorted theology.

For further reading: Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan wrote against the bill in these pages in May. 

From the January issue: In his review of America’s Fatal Leap: 1991-2016, a compilation of essays by Paul W. Schroeder, Nathan Pinkoski critiques the contradictions typical of a certain type of foreign policy analyst of the post-Cold War era: “On one hand, he opposed America’s imperialist adventures and invasions. On the other, he embraced America’s universal responsibility to adjudicate and enforce ‘association-exclusion,’ and to do so by a ­variety of ever more coercive tools.”

For further reading: Schroeder opposed the neoconservative movement, and yet the founders of the movement were already declaring it dead by the mid 1990s. James Nuechterlein wrote about these pronouncements in “The End of Neoconservatism” (May 1996). Notably, he names Norman Podhoretz in the first paragraph, who died this week.

James Hankins, professor of history at Harvard and frequent contributor to these pages, is retiring after this semester. He was one of the few members of the Harvard faculty who respected the Western cannon and provided mentorship to campus conservatives. His loss will be felt, writes Leo Koerner, president of the Harvard Republican Club. In his final class on the history of ancient philosophy, Hankins “concluded that the modern and contemporary omission of the Christian tradition is partly to blame for the soullessness of our age. He pointed out that no professor will take up the task of teaching this content at Harvard.”

For further reading: Hankins wrote about the need for virtuous leadership in universities, which the woke movement put in jeopardy, in “Put Down the Woke Man’s Burden” (2022).

Christmas is a time for spectacle, and few can do better than the Radio City Rockettes, now in their hundredth year of performances. Notably, as our junior fellow Jillian Parks saw when she attended a show, the whirl of elves and nutcrackers gives way to a live nativity scene. This same type of spectacle has been adopted by megachurches around the country, especially in her native Bible Belt, but to a disunified, overstimulating effect. Though “spectacle is not at odds with the religious,” she writes, Christians should remember that “they are keepers of the story and animating ethos” of Christmas.

For further reading: The annual Christmas pageantry is the most visible sign of our culture’s Christian origins. But as the season becomes more commercialized and removed from its source, will we eventually find ourselves as Christians without culture? Fr. Richard John Neuhaus explored the question of “Christ Without Culture” in the April 2007 issue of the magazine.

Franz Kafka’s last novel ends in the middle of a sentence, possibly cut short by his own death. So too do all lives end, cut off without satisfaction, Carl R. Trueman writes. But in the Christmas season, we see how Christ begins to confront death: “Death is the enemy that makes all of life ultimately absurd, and the Incarnation is the beginning of the answer, the start of that which brings a coherence to creation.”

For further reading: Peter J. Leithart wrote about the resonance of beauty and death in October’s “Beauty Rhymes with Death.”

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.

• March 5, 2026: Annual D.C. Lecture: “Our Crisis is Metaphysical” ft. Mary Harrington | Washington, D.C. Details coming soon.

Until next time,

VIRGINIA AABRAM

Newsletter Editor