This year, just like last year, Gay Pride weekend coincided with the feast of Corpus Christi. Washington, D.C.’s Pride parade was fairly restrained: It featured a cornucopia of Episcopalians, and all the marchers went out of their way to sweetly drape beads over the little elementary-school girls standing in front of me. There were Affirming … Read more
Eight years ago today, a famous American philosopher died who had lived as a Catholic the last year of his life. Not so long ago, his name — Mortimer J. Adler — was synonymous with the “great books” approach to education he had pioneered with Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago in the 1940s … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker revisits the strange history of belief in extraterrestrials and considers what impact their existence might have on Christianity. We tend to consider speculation about extraterrestrials to be a recent phenomenon, a task forced on us by the scientific knowledge we’ve gained during the last century. It’s … Read more
It is a sunny Sunday morning in a typical London suburb. I am doing some quick work in the garden before Mass. My next-door neighbors are Evangelical Christians, originally from India. This morning, the grandmother, wearing a sari, is walking up and down with her little granddaughter, and when we stop to chat, she tells … Read more
Summer is in full wilt, and that means it’s time for the InsideCatholic Summer Reading List. We’ve asked bloggers, staff, and writers to suggest a few titles they’ve recently enjoyed. They’ve obliged. Have a look at the list — you’ll find something for every interest — and then add your own recommendations in the … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Raymond Matthew Wray travels to a lonely corner of Ethiopia, where the Orthodox Church claims to have the “lost” Ark of the Covenant. “He says you must go now,” my translator told me. I looked from him to the official standing across from the old church ruins. “I … Read more
For those who may be lamenting the seeming resurgence of the Catholic Left in the Age of Obama, I would like to point out some good news: This year’s spate of bishops’ assignments have been quite heartening. Since the beginning of 2009, there have been ten appointments announced by the Vatican. All of them should … Read more
How should Catholics think about Iran? And how should a Catholic think about Iran? These are two different questions, as an individual person and the Church are two different things, but in trying to follow the news recently, partly through electronic “tweets” directly from Iran, including those from one anonymous Catholic Persian we have on … Read more
Some virtues get a bad name because of the ways their names are used. For instance, the mighty, cosmic force St. Thomas calls Charity, which Dante said “moves the sun and other stars,” nowadays calls to mind instead a hovercraft full of eels. By which I mean a writhing mass of irrelevant mental images: tax … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker says that the single greatest moral crisis we’ve ever faced is upon us now. It is difficult to gain attention in an era that uses superlatives to describe dishwashing liquid and mayonnaise. Perhaps speaking simply and directly might prove such an oddity that words may again … Read more
A certain mindset that postmodernity finds very appealing identifies purity with sterility. To be pure is, in this view, to be uncontaminated, germ-free, barren, scrubbed, metallic. This mindset (which is actually very ancient) tends to think of “pure” spirituality as a spirituality unsoiled by contact with grosser elements such as matter and, most especially, … Read more
The other day I was already thinking about gratitude when I started reading about old students and friends suffering from the continuing — the continuous — degeneration of the Episcopal church. Some of them faced losing their jobs, or had already lost them, but most of them suffered simply from seeing the communion they had … Read more
Matthew Lickona is a Catholic writer who understands the new media, as a visit to his classy Web site immediately attests. Already well-known for his book Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic (Loyola Press, 2006), Lickona also understands the changing habits of younger readers, which is why he has published the first … Read more
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” That’s how divorce starts for the Catholic couples I talked to: hard-core, confession-going, Humanae Vitae-believing Catholic couples. Couples who know exactly what marriage is supposed to be. One man I spoke with, now divorced, took Scott Hahn’s Christian marriage class with his theology-major fiancée. Another couple, now divorced, … Read more
Father’s Day is almost upon us, and this time I really don’t want to blow it. Greg is a wonderful dad to our seven children. There has to be some present that expresses how much I appreciate him. Top gifts this year are the same as every other year: golf bags, fishing gear, and leather … Read more
Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney was born on May 8, 1786, three years before the world would collapse into the chaos of the French Revolution. His schooling did not start until he was nine. It lasted only three years. When Jean was eleven, an underground priest stopped at the Vianney family farm. When he asked Jean … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Todd M. Aglialoro says that golf isn’t just a game… it’s also a crash course in virtue. “Yes!” cried the young man fiercely, “Footling game! Blanked infernal fat-headed silly ass of a game! Nothing but a waste of time.” The Sage winced. “Don’t say that, my boy.” P.G. Wodehouse … Read more
In an interview published at National Review Online, Gian Maria Vian, editor of L’Osservatore Romano, responded to his critics. Vian makes it clear that he doesn’t have a high opinion of writers, like me, who have taken him to task for his treatment of President Barack Obama: I think that if American Catholics … Read more
It’s interesting to be known as “the Catholic guy” at a public university in a predominantly Baptist town. I don’t think I fully understood the implications, however, until quite recently. It was February, and I was in Little Rock for the Southeastern Conference’s women’s basketball tournament. While I was out of town, some undergraduate student … Read more
Having come back from a two-week trek through Europe, I return this week to the subject of the virtues — this time, it’s Patience. Regular readers of mine might complain that here I’m preaching to the choir: Surely they of all people have mastered this virtue, if only by working their way through my labyrinthine … Read more