Columnist Carl Trueman points out that family planning challenges the humanity of children. While IVF and surrogacy do not, of course, make the children produced through those methods less human, Trueman marks how they nonetheless change how children are treated: “In the eyes of the law, they necessarily become analogous to pieces of property, to things, as the law must intervene in the many complicated situations that arise as a result of divorcing reproduction from its traditional context.”

He traces the commodification of children to no-fault divorce. When marriage became an optional, contractual bond, the entire ecology of human relations was degraded.

For further reading: Properly ordered anthropology is a recurring theme for Trueman. His October 2025 essay, “Toward a New Humanism,” delivered as First Things’ D.C. Lecture that year, is a fuller treatment of what it means to be human.

The former prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Müller, writes about the ill effects of a troubling (false) doctrine circulating in Catholic thought. Too many, argues Cardinal Müller, see truth as something dependent on perspective or epoch. This view leads to the improper preeminence of the pastoral over the true, “such that what is dogmatically true can be pastorally false.”

He reminds us that while it “is popularly held that religion is a matter of individual and collective feeling and that all historical religions are merely culturally dependent expressions of these feelings. In this vein, no religion is deemed to have a monopoly on truth. But the Church positions itself as the authority appointed by God precisely because it understands itself as the divinely mandated teacher of the revelation given once and for all in Christ and, therefore, as the sacrament of salvation in him.” There is but one truth.

For further reading: Carl Trueman warned that pastoral language, which does have a place, can be appropriated for partisan politics: “When Pastoral Language Becomes Political Rhetoric” (2015).

From the January issue: Ephraim Radner, who writes the print issue’s The Back Page column, reflects on the oddity of the Nativity. He also warns against reading the smallness of the Incarnation, Jesus was a baby, as an endorsement of smallness or a valorization of insignificance. Babies are not small and weak and fragile because they are simulacra of the Christ Child, following a God of principles; rather, Christ entered the world in a way that was specific and personal—odd. Follow the person who was small, not the concept of smallness.

For further reading: Radner reflected on the Incarnation in last year’s January issue, too. “This Shining Night” is both a beautiful piece of writing and a theologically deep consideration. I encourage you to read it while there’s still some Christmas spirit in the air.

“The story of God’s incarnation, the story of Jesus, contains the world. In this story the whole world is taken up by God. We know this story well, not because it is ours to tell, but because it is God’s story now made our own. ‘In and through you I will make it all my own,’ God says in this child.”

Listen: Damian Thompson, Spectator editor and religion podcaster, joins Rusty on the Editor’s Desk podcast to discuss his December 2025 article, “Canterbury Fails.” Both men are educated observers of Anglicanism, and the conversation is a useful one. From the fractious constituencies of London to (the possibly Potemkin) Global Anglicanism, it’s all here.

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.

• February 3, 2026: Second Annual Angelicum Aquinas Lecture: “A Conversation with the Theologian of the Papal Household” ft. Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P. | New York, NY. 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,

JACOB AKEY

Associate Editor