When we open our newspapers on Father’s Day, we expect to find something nice about dads—often heroic dads. Yet, for every boy or girl whose father was a doctor or Marine who stormed the beaches of Normandy, there is a dad who was more complicated; not a great dad but one still loved and had … Read more
Since the Enlightenment, rationalists have liked to cite witch burning as a prime example of medieval ignorance and religious (usually Catholic) bigotry run amok. (Leftists today still denounce it as a cynical plot by the strong against the weak.) Writing history that way was simple: Historians catalogued horrors, disparaged religion (or at least someone else’s … Read more
When St. Paul said in Ephesians 6 that our struggle was not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, he was not kidding. What we might add today is that the principalities and powers have shrewdly made sure that the struggle is precisely over our “flesh and blood,” over the very meaning of … Read more
In a our present milieu where dogs are our darling pets, fed on choice delicacies, shampooed and bathed in fancy dog tubs, housed in designer kennels, and taken around for joy rides sometimes in flamboyant doggy clothes, canine fans may be puzzled by the derision dogs receive in the pages of the New and Old … Read more
News reports inform us that members of the Scottish Parliament have for the first time voted in favor of Scotland becoming independent. Here is a snippet from the Stornoway Gazette: First Minister Alex Salmond hailed the vote, by 69 to 52, as a “milestone” in the country’s history. He also revealed that 15,000 people have … Read more
Various Scriptural passages indicate that Jesus, before his trial and execution, had hoped for a very different outcome of his sojourn on earth: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, … Read more
Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has been turned upside down in the name of an ecumenical council whose true interpretation continues to be debated more than half a century after it closed. One point of contention is the Council’s teaching on religious liberty. In his 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura, Pope Pius IX labeled as … Read more
It does not bode well for the rule of law when the standards for determining whether a statute is constitutional change from case to case. Justices Kennedy, Souter, and O’Connor of the US Supreme Court once wrote, “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.” (This line opened a plurality opinion in which they … Read more
Having spent more than a few years dealing with mental patients, nine of them as a chaplain to a large state mental hospital, I thought I was pretty well informed about the etiology of psychosis. When I had to deal with a distressed individual whose symptoms were unlike any I had ever encountered, I asked … Read more
Fans of traditional country music have a lot to complain about in the modern era of country music, but one of its biggest faults is the pervasive materialism seeping into the lyrics. Do the things that symbolize country living define the meaning of the music? Ask an outsider what country music is about and they … Read more
The left-leaning magazine The Nation has published a list of what it deems America’s all-time, most influential progressives. The list, which you can review for yourself, is very revealing. For starters, it’s fascinating that The Nation leads with Eugene Debs at number 1. Debs was a socialist. It was 100 years ago this year, in … Read more
$5,000. That’s all we need to raise each month to sustain and fully operate Crisis magazine. Jaws drop when I speak of how much Crisis accomplishes with so little. While our own self-imposed austerity measures allow us to run Crisis on a fraction of the budget of previous years’, as a non-profit publication operating without subscription … Read more
Temperance, alas, is a virtue with a bad reputation. It calls to mind photographs of the flint-jawed Carry Nation, crusading against alcohol, until finally her cause carried the day and Prohibition, speakeasies, bootlegging, and organized crime swept the land. I’m not being quite fair to that old temperance movement. Drunkenness was a scourge for a … Read more
During the Dark Ages, the heritage of Western civilization would have been lost if not for heroic men and women of unconquered Ireland. Times are pretty dark right now in the West, and Ireland once again remains unfallen to anti-life barbarians. Might the Irish save civilization again? That’s no exaggeration. Planned Parenthood International has wielded … Read more
Imagine needing the grace of the confessional yet unable to find a priest. Imagine being unable to find a priest to baptize your baby or to witness your marriage. Imagine a country without confirmations or ordinations. Imagine longing to receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, but having no Mass at which to assist. Indeed, … Read more
For Greater Glory, a romanticized movie about Mexico’s Cristero War in the 1920s, will appeal to Catholics. And to lovers of freedom to worship. And to Americans who cherish the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, for it portrays precisely the sort of situation our Founding Fathers feared. For all these reasons For Greater Glory … Read more
Most Americans haven’t the foggiest idea that a quasi-Stalinist, violently anti-Catholic regime once existed on our southern borders. Those who don’t know how bad Mexico was in the late 1920s are about to learn, though: at least those who see For Greater Glory, a recently-released movie about the Cristero War, a passionate (and bloody) defense … Read more
Russell Kirk deserves special attention on the topic of ideologies. In his twenty-nine books on politics, history, constitutional law, literature, social criticism, economics, and fiction, the legacy of the French Revolution and the loosening of the ideologues upon the world haunted him at a profound level. Tellingly, Kirk’s most important influence was Edmund Burke, the … Read more
Robert Spencer is known as a bête noire to Islamist sympathizers. He published a critical blog with a chapter-by-chapter study of the Qur’an during 2007-2008, and in his current blog, http://www.jihadwatch.org/, furnishes us with up-to-date information hardly ever available from the mass media. He has also published several books on Islam and Muhammad; but his … Read more
The Avengers, who some are saying is the best “Super-Hero” movie of all time, shattered the box-office on its opening weekend. It is a highly entertaining, action packed, funny movie that brings together some hi-profile actors and some legendary comic-book characters. The movies premise, as with most “Super-Hero” films, is global domination by a dark … Read more