He arrived in the United States from Cuba all by himself at the age of 15, armed only with his Catholic faith. After living with foster families and working his way through college, Mel Martinez graduated from Florida State University’s law school in 1973 and went on to a successful career as a trial lawyer … Read more
The University of Dallas (UD) has long been counted among a handful of strong Catholic colleges where committed Catholic parents can safely send their sons and daughters. Billing itself as “the Catholic university for independent thinkers,” UD is one of the top liberal arts universities in America. It is one of only eight universities in … Read more
Although the communion lines at Sunday Mass in American churches have perhaps never been longer, polls show that more than 60 percent of American Catholics say they do not believe in the “real presence”—that Jesus Christ is bodily present in the Eucharist. What does this mean? Are U.S. Catholics lacking in faith or poorly catechized … Read more
The top priority of Republican Party strategists over the last few years has been winning more support from two groups—religiously active voters and racial and ethnic minorities. In the case of Mass-attending Catholics who also belong to minority groups—Hispanic, Asian, and African-American—this outreach effort poses an intriguing question: Will Republicans succeed in entering minority communities … Read more
Only a few days after his inauguration, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush dined with the newly installed archbishop of Washington, D.C., Theodore (now Cardinal) McCarrick. In spite of concerns about security, the dinner took place in the archdiocese’s chancery, not the White House. On January 31, Bush met in the White … Read more
The new president of the University of San Francisco (USF), Rev. Stephen A. Privett, S.J., recently announced the reorganization— the effective dismantling—of the St. Ignatius Institute, which for the past 25 years has offered the university’s undergraduates the option of a Catholic great-books program in addition to their other courses. Founded in 1976 by Rev. … Read more
A senior adviser at the White House asked me, as publisher of a Catholic magazine, to put together a group of prominent Catholics to meet with President George W. Bush and discuss his administration’s new emphasis on faith-based social services. There was a reason for the request: Those who know anything about private charities—and that … Read more
Audiobooks revive a literary tradition that’s even older than reading. Homer, the first great poet of the West, wasn’t a writer but a performer, with the dining halls of ancient Greece as his stage. Before the advent of written literature, the medium of poetry was dramatic utterance and song. Eyes were no more necessary to … Read more
My family of three—my wife, Theresa, my twelve-year- old daughter, Hannah, and I—will fly to Eastern Europe next month and become four. Waiting for us is a four-year-old boy named Cyprian who needs a permanent family. From his pictures he looks like a young Omar Shariff, with dark hair and eyes and gleaming cheekbones: just … Read more
The postelection saga rent the veil of the media temple. It revealed something we have always known: They’re not on our side! What was different this time was not merely ideological bias but tonal or, to put it another way, emotional bias. When Matt Lauer on The Today Show asked whether one of Florida Secretary … Read more
M. Night Shymalan’s 1999 blockbuster, The Sixth Sense, took the moviegoing public by surprise. His previous film, the brilliant but underappreciated Wide Awake (1998), had gone straight from lackluster reviews to video-store oblivion, so Shymalan well-deserved the success and acclaim The Sixth Sense suddenly brought him. It made more than $250 million and has passed … Read more
Catholics must wonder sometimes why the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) exists. On October 16, Catholic News Service (CNS) of the USCC issued a story with the headline, “Gore sees hope for ‘common ground’ movement on abortion.” Written by Patricia Zapor, based on an interview with the vice president, the article serves to provide official Catholic … Read more
Based on the popular novel by Steven Pressfield, The Legend of Bagger Vance opens with elderly Hardy Greaves, played by Jack Lemon, suffering a mild heart attack on the golf course. Sinking to the ground, he asks himself why he continues to risk his life by playing golf. The answer comes when he tells the … Read more
On the heels of Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter to bishops, Dominus Iesus (Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church), comes the predictable chorus of boos. Once again, the papacy of John Paul II is accused of destroying post-Vatican II progress toward genuine interreligious dialogue by affirming the one way to salvation through Jesus … Read more
Catholics who crave greater political involvement by their bishops should take note of Michigan’s seven bishops, led by Adam Cardinal Maida. Two years ago, they helped defeat a referendum legalizing euthanasia; now they are weighing in on the most important contest over school choice yet to arise in our nation. What happens to school choice … Read more
The golden age of the Broadway musical may be long past, but never has the musical been so gloriously recorded as in the present. Those who only know and treasure the familiar original cast recordings of shows like Brigadoon, Oklahoma, and West Side Story have a great treat in store. Quietly, over the past decade, … Read more
Crisis readers, I am sure, will want to know about the recent publication by Carroll & Graf of three novels by Madeleine St John (pronounced “sin-gin”), an Anglican and a Londoner, of Australian birth. St John’s work deserves to be widely read by Catholics who are in the habit of recommending only writers now long-deceased. … Read more
The most influential American philosopher of the 20th century was received into the Church this past December. Those familiar with the trajectory of Mortimer Adler’s work, not just the Great Books Program, should not be surprised. Born December 28, 1902, Mortimer has been a catholic philosopher all his long life, and now he will spend … Read more
Vice President Gore had the opportunity to address the Catholic Press Association at its May convention in Baltimore, Maryland. He decided not to at the last minute, but I couldn’t help thinking about what he might have said. Here’s how I imagined the question-and-answer period following his speech: During the primary, you and Sen. Bradley … Read more
A sense of tragedy helps to keep a culture moral. Tragedy reminds us of the suffering we cannot alleviate, the finite boundaries we must not cross, no matter how tempting the horizon. In the ancient world, tragic boundaries were policed by the gods so that the men who acted as gods soon learned, painfully, otherwise. … Read more
With so much happening in the Church right now, we are hard at work drawing out the battle plans so we can keep the faithful informed—but we need to know who we have on our side. Do you stand with Crisis Magazine?