I want to tell you about an exciting new project. First Things is launching our first topical newsletter. It’s called The Fourth Watch, and it’s about Catholicism. The questions facing the Catholic Church have-wide reaching implications and spawn no small amount of sensationalism and quick takes. Jim Keating, a theologian at Providence College, will analyze the storms that the Barque of Peter faces and offer, whenever possible, a passage through them.

Sign-ups are open now, the first installment will go out on Monday, December 1st. Subscribe below with just one click: 

From the December issue: “Like the glamor of evil, emptiness has its allures,” writes editor Rusty Reno. When the West was rebuilding after World War II, Camus’ formulation that “disaster is today our common fatherland” imbued an inescapable nihilism into the post-war, open society consensus. And despite the freedom and peace such a vision of a new, unattached beginning seems to offer, it hasn’t been successful. The “warm loves of people and place are stirring” again. 

For further reading: The West is at the beginning of a civil war, similar to the one envisioned in Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints. The book, long out of print and just recently republished by Vauban Books, tells the story of France’s self-destruction in the face of an invasion by a million migrants. Nathan Pinkoski wrote about it in “The Spiritual Death of the West” (May 2023).

In Germany, there is a clash between its two constitutions: the written one and the cultural one. Andreas Lombard writes about how the AfD party is pushing the consensus over what is constitutional to its breaking point: “What Steinmeier calls ‘defensive democracy’ obscures a creeping coup d’état. The AfD is an enemy of the lived constitution. The government is determined to revise (without saying so, and without voter consent) the written constitution so that it serves the unwritten one.”

For further reading: When Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to millions of Muslim immigrants, it was seen as atonement for its Nazi past. Merkel, whose legacy is now contested in the age of rising populism, released her memoir shortly after leaving office. Christopher Caldwell reviewed it in “Merkel’s Country” (March 2025).

To love the past but not live in it is tricky for a certain type of melancholic. Peter Leithart explores how connection can draw one out of the past in the new film The Ballad of Wallis Island. In the movie, a former folk duo, long broken up, reckons with their old love when an eccentric millionaire forces them back together. Leithart writes, “Nostalgic, yes, but the thrust of the film is the need to outgrow nostalgia, to discover new harmonies when old harmonies grow dissonant or fade.”

For further reading: Could it be that nostalgia is a sin? Leroy Huizenga says yes in “Nostalgia Is a Sin” (2012): “Nostalgia is a sin, a form of sloth, and engaging in it enervates discipleship and devotion. But tradition is different; tradition is not the dead faith of the living but rather the living faith of the dead.”

Upcoming Events

• December 1, 2025: Launch of The Fourth Watch: A Newsletter about Catholicism | Sign up with one click.
• February 1, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida | Sarasota, FL. Details coming soon.

Until next time,

VIRGINIA AABRAM

Newsletter Editor