In mid-January, it was made public that His Excellency Bishop Barry Knestout (my local ordinary) had made arrangements with the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia to allow an invalid consecration of a female “bishop” at St. Bede’s Catholic Church in Williamsburg. The public outcry was so intense that the Episcopalians chose to move the event … Read more
On November 4, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued an Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, in response to “groups of Anglicans” who had petitioned “repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately,” which created for them a new ecclesiastical structure: the Personal Ordinariates. The stated purpose of these was “to … Read more
President Donald Trump released his long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan Tuesday, promising a “new dawn” for the region. This comes after the failed $50 billion plan presented last July by the President’s counselor and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dubbed the “Deal of the Century” by the White House, it aimed to establish financial infrastructure in the Palestinian … Read more
Modern Catholicism needs to re-examine its uneasy relationship with feminism, and there’s no better time than this year’s tragic anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As it turns out, January 22 follows hard on the heels of a new landmark—January 15—for Catholic feminists, namely, the Pope’s unprecedented appointment of a woman, Francesca Di Giovanni, to a … Read more
In the midst of some of the most divided, rancorous politics America has ever seen, there is one area of intriguing bipartisan agreement: paid family leave. What in the past has been decried by the Right as socialism and by the Left as unnecessary has, in the past few years, become an unexpected rallying point … Read more
Recently the nonagenarian environmentalist, Sir David Attenborough, familiar to viewers of BBC America over many years for his nature shows, warned in bloodcurdling terms that it was almost too late to save the world from the horrors of the “climate crisis.” I remember as a child watching similar warnings during the early 1970s, of the … Read more
During a hilarious 2018 performance in London, comedy musicians Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords stop to chat about gender identity dynamics within their two-man band. “The band is very male-dominated. It’s systemic. It’s a systemic problem—it’s the f***ing patriarchy!” they declare to an audience roaring with laughter. McKenzie and Clement, … Read more
Overroads is marked down for demolition. Last year, the owners of the former home of G.K. Chesterton and his wife, Frances, put the house on the market with an asking price of £1.9 million pounds (about $2.4 million dollars). They found no buyers, and so turned to property developers. These, in turn, applied to the … Read more
Gerbert of Aurillac and Bi Sheng of Hubei were roughly contemporary (946–1003 and 990–1051), but Europe and China are far from each other. It is a pity that these men could not meet, for it would have been a unique match of minds. Gerbert became the first French pope—as Sylvester II—with an intelligence “off the … Read more
I’m ambivalent about that most common pro-life argument: that, because life begins at conception, to abort a pregnancy is to commit murder. That’s not to say I don’t believe it’s true. On the contrary: it’s not only true, it’s obviously true. It’s one of the few points upon which credible scientists and ethicists can agree. … Read more
Editor’s note: this article by the founder of Crisis first appeared in the March 1993 print edition of this magazine. More and more, through deception and euphemism, the American people are being led by their government into the primitive and barbaric practice of abortion. They are being led to think of abortion as a moral good, a … Read more
Imagine there was a program to help fund alternative schooling including religious schooling, and even the costs of homeschooling, that was not under the control of the U.S. Congress. Not possible, right? Wrong! I was at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday for oral arguments in the landmark case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. … Read more
There is no arguing that we are facing a crisis of immense proportions in the Church. We most likely wince at the daily headlines of scandal, accusations, cover-ups, doublespeak, and unfaithfulness to vows, teaching, and immorality within the hierarchy of the Church—all of which leave her vulnerable and disreputable at exactly the time when the … Read more
This year’s theme for the March for Life, “Pro-Life is Pro-Woman,” is likely to resonate with the thousands of college students who will travel to Washington, D.C.—especially those from America’s most faithful Catholic colleges. For decades, radical pro-abortion feminism has dominated higher education. But at the colleges recommended in The Newman Guide for their strong … Read more
Editor’s note: this article first appeared in the March 1998 edition of Crisis Magazine. It seems a bit strange that a well-worn former government employee and sometime philosopher like myself should be asked to address this assemblage on matters of ethics and honor, right and wrong, on the question, “Does Honor Have a Future?” But as … Read more
The recent announcement by Their Former Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex—aka Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—that they are “leaving the royal family” has caused endless comment around the globe, and not only among the Queen’s British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and other subjects. Sixth in line to the throne occupied by his … Read more
Fr. Paul Lester Stenhouse, MSC (1935–2019), passed away of cancer recently. I initially learned about him through the good offices of his dear friend, a contributor to his publications and fellow Aussie, Wanda Skowronska, who was kind enough to share some stories about him. She also encouraged our cooperation. Fr. Stenhouse was truly a Christian universalist … Read more
The Catholic Church lost a great ally on January 12 when conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton died at the age of 75 from cancer. Scruton was not Catholic but Anglican—the author of Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England. Yet he was a friend of Rome, telling the Catholic Herald in 2015, … Read more
Mark Joseph Stern, the resident LGBT scold at Slate magazine, is having a hissy fit over pronouns. Stern complains that a “transgender” pedophile in federal custody was not allowed to be called by his preferred pronouns. The case revolves around a man named Norman Varner, who, in 2012, was found to have sexual images of … Read more
The Philippines, a sovereign republic made up of an estimated 7,000 islands, is a tropical paradise subject to the occasional typhoon. In 1585, the Philippines became a Spanish colony, named after King Philip II of Spain. The Filipino language, based on Tagalog and English, is replete with Spanish words and proper names. Thanks to Spanish … Read more