In this season of elections and of holy souls, it is fitting to recall one of the loveliest monuments to true democracy: the windows of the trades at Chartres Cathedral. The stained-glass windows at Chartres are famous the world over, and rightly so. Thanks to the foresight of the town’s mayors and the determination of … Read more
American Catholics seem to be sleepwalking toward the edge of an abyss. It’s as if we’ve hardly begun to realize to ourselves what’s at stake in this election. We don’t like to think about it. We’re vaguely banking on the hope that whatever happens will not turn out to be a big deal. One reason … Read more
One exchange in the second Presidential debate caught my imagination. It was the one in which Mr Romney asked Mr Obama whether he ever thought about his pension, and Mr Obama replied that he did not, but that he was sure that it was smaller than Mr Romney’s. Of course, Mr Romney’s question was itself … Read more
The Church, it is sometimes said, thinks in terms of centuries, not years or decades … or election cycles. Without intending to minimize the importance of this upcoming election and its implications for economic and foreign policy matters, it’s worth reminding ourselves that a long game is being played as well, a game with civilizational … Read more
G. K. Chesterton once described America as a “nation with the soul of a church.” Many have wrongly interpreted this statement as Chesterton’s way of saying that America was a Christian nation, or that Americans were especially pious and devout people. Chesterton meant something rather different, and not especially complementary. America is like a church … Read more
By now everyone paying attention to the presidential race has heard of the tasteless double-entendre ad the Obama campaign has put out, comparing voting for the President to losing your virginity. I am trying—I am failing—to imagine the astonishment if someone had suggested the like to the leaders of the Democratic party of my youth … Read more
Writing about the Republican National Convention in August, New York Times columnist David Brooks fretted that the Republican Party has been captured by a “hyperindividualistic mentality,” and he commended Condoleezza Rice’s celebration of “larger national goals—the long national struggle to extend benefits and to mobilize all human potential.” Last month Brooks reinforced this claim by … Read more
Human problems lend themselves to many solutions, some of them with an oppressive heavy-hand and others with a gentle touch. Gravity easily oppresses and complicates problems whereas lightheartedness simplifies the complex and applies a magical gentleness that Shakespeare compares to the play of the fairies at night that perform their favors in the silence of … Read more
Not long ago in Iowa Governor Romney caused a slight kerfuffle when he said he did not have any specific legislative proposals for the right to life. Almost immediately he added that he would, however, reinstitute Mexico City Policy. Ho-hum. Mexico City Policy is often touted by candidates and by office holders as pro-life bona … Read more
An organization called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good came out on October 9 with what it announced was a “Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It is entitled “On All of Our Shoulders,” and it has no less than 157 signatories describing themselves as “Catholic theologians, academics, and ministers concerned for … Read more
I want to be clear, at the outset, that this is not yet another blog about Catholic teaching on the morality of homosexuality, nor is it (except indirectly) one more defense of the traditional family. It’s partly (but again indirectly) about the social effects of treating homosexual unions as though they were equivalent to marriage … Read more
During a campaign event in 2011, a feminist stopped Barack Obama in mid-speech to ask him if he supported free contraceptives. Obama replied: “Darn tootin’!” According to Obama’s secularist philosophy, this invented right to free contraceptives trumps the First Amendment’s right to religious freedom. If religious employers object to financing the sex lives of their … Read more
Two woodsmen emerge from the thick overgrowth of wood, and wend their way to the edge of a pristine, shimmering lake. The beautiful Glimmerglass, as this water is known, resplendent in its virgin serenity, belies the savage danger that awaits these visitors to her shores. As Natty Bumppo and his companion, Henry March, converse at … Read more
October is the month of the Most Holy Rosary, a devotion associated in modern times with the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917, during the First World War. Mary asked for prayer and penance, which she always requests in these private revelations that echo the public revelation in the Gospel: “Repent, … Read more
It would be both dishonest and absurdly ironic (since my October 17 article in Crisis was about intellectual integrity) if I were to fail to point out and correct a rather serious oversight that it contained. I stated that the Church teaches that to vote for a candidate who supports abortion is to be complicit … Read more
One thing that defenders of the sexual revolution will not understand is that, although the act of intercourse is private (or better be), everything else about sex is public. I don’t simply mean that people will know that John and Mary are in a “relationship,” horrid denatured word, or that sexual intercourse results in those … Read more
Where to begin? Well, there are hardly any right angles in this building. Broken forms, discontinuities, and protrusions in its geometry both inside and outside characterize the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Such imbalance and departure from mathematical harmony is usually explained away by labeling it a “postmodern-deconstructivist” building, as if style were … Read more
There are commentators on the sports channels whose numbing dialogues would never be confused with the Algonquin Round Table. These are the so-called Monday Morning Quarterbacks. Some historians quarterback that way. Pope Pius XII, hailed in his lifetime as a protector of persecuted people, has suffered in reputation from lax minds who never exercised themselves … Read more
Following is the homily given October 14 by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on the occasion of the Marian Pilgrimage for Life and Liberty. On this beautiful autumn Sunday in … Read more
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480-524), best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, is one of the most fascinating and puzzling figures from Late Antiquity. He was born in that time of transition in Western Europe that brought an end to the Roman Empire and saw the rise of the barbarian successor states, which have ruled … Read more