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First Principles over Hot Takes

March 4, 2021 3 min read
A telescope over the city

In a world of headlines and social media posts about Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, and politicians behaving badly, it’s a good time to reflect on what our first principles are before heading into debates or occasions for outrage.

Prime Matters seeks to devote a great deal of our content to articulating our first principles: it's there for everyone to see in the Foundations section of our site. It's quite uncommon for an outlet to articulate their first principles in an in-depth manner. This isn't to toot our own horn. Instead, it's to highlight something unique about our project and our goals in the midst of a news- and opinion-saturated culture. Our project openly admits what our perspective is - the Catholic Imaginative Vision - and seeks to demonstrate frequently why the Christian vision of the world is particularly helpful for addressing the issues of the day.

You have likely noticed the absence of the "hottest" headlines or the "freshest" takes in the Weekly Update. This is intentional. Too often do we find ourselves setting our priorities and deciding what is important based on the demands of the nightly news cycle. We desire for our readers instead to be steeped in the Christian vision of the world, empowered to address the issues they discover in the world around them in a deep way: not at face value, but in terms of how those issues relate (more or less importantly) to the Catholic Imaginative Vision as a whole.

No matter the week's headlines, we must keep our eyes fixed on the greater reality and the promise of the world to come.


The Pope relates how a psychiatrist helped him in his life. Today we posted on our site an interview between Dr. James Link and Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, discussing Bishop Conley's own journey of addressing his mental health and the relationship between psychology and Christian spirituality.


A little-known story about a Denver priest who was shot and killed by an anarchist while distributing communion and whose cause remains open was highlighted recently.


Birth rates continue to plummet, even during a pandemic.


A global map painted on an ostrich egg is believed to be the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, created just after the European discovery of the “New World.” It's the “first time ever that the names of countries such as Brazil, Germania, Arabia, and Judea have appeared on a globe.”


Iraqi Christians remember on the eve of their first papal visit a beloved bishop who was kidnapped and killed 13 years ago.

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