With the departure of Johnny Carson, I lost my late-night viewing habit. Like his predecessor, Jack Parr, Carson could entertain a broad audience while maintaining a reasonable standard of taste and decorum. When we laughed at Carson’s jokes, we laughed not just at others but at ourselves, as well as Carson, whose greatest asset was … Read more
Readers may have noticed that I added an explanatory note to the review section. I have been asked if this is a “disclaimer,” meant to disassociate myself from our reviewers’ opinions. That was certainly not my intent. I deemed the note necessary by the letters I have received from some readers who assume the mere … Read more
Catholics make up the largest religious denomination in this country-65 million. They are also one-third of the electorate in a presidential election, some 30 million. Yet in more than 200 years, a Catholic priest has never served as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives. In December, an 18-member bipartisan committee gave its top recommendation … Read more
Fr. Andrew Greeley has been quite busy lately. In the October 30 issue of America, he spent a full page lambasting the Crisis Catholic Voter Report, saying it “would probably earn a failing grade in most graduate seminars on survey research.” Then on the November 29 Early Show, he said to Bryant Gumbel it was … Read more
In the past six months, Bill Donohue and the 350,000 members of the Catholic League have been battling movies like Stigmata and Dogma, the smear campaign against Pius XII, and the sin against both faith and beauty at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Mayor Guiliani’s decision, surely prompted by Donohue’s growing influence, to defund the … Read more
He was the strongest man I ever knew. He had will-power of iron. The doctor said to stop smoking. After that day he never smoked another cigarette. Years later a different doctor banned alcohol—not another drink passed his lips for more than thirty years. Of all the money he inherited from his mother and aunt, … Read more
Maybe I’m hard-hearted. But, except for rare occasions, I don’t consider feelings newsworthy. I distinctly remember the period during the early ’70s when reporters began interviewing people about their emotional reactions to events rather than about the event itself “How did you feel when the plane burst into flames?” I considered making some form of … Read more
This issue marks the first time, in my tenure as editor, that Crisis has devoted its entire features section to a single topic and a single author. Crisis takes this step confident our readers will agree that the time is long overdue to tell the whole story of Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“Out of the Heart … Read more
In a recent Washington Post op-ed (May 6, 1999), Richard Cohen unveiled a strategy that pro-life forces will need to resist before the next presidential election. Like Cohen, abortion advocates are likely to bait pro-lifers over the next 18 months, preaching that their presidential candidates lack integrity if they don’t make abortion the major theme … Read more
Anyone who has been to a Catholic conference has heard the following remark rise up out of the audience: “What we really need to do is to pray and get before the Blessed Sacrament!” Anyone who has spoken at a Catholic conference has had to confront this statement. Usually, in order not to appear like … Read more
It is always a temptation to read the facts through the lens of the pervasive mood. Paul Weyrich, prominent among religious conservatives, has become progressively depressed over the fate of our culture. In February, Weyrich sent a four-page letter to conservatives. It is a much more thoughtful letter than has been reported, and deserves our … Read more
The popular film Dead Man Walking sent more than a few ripples through the country on the topic of the death penalty. Despite the film’s well-taken point about God’s mercy, its sentimental appeal only convinced me that most arguments against the death penalty are ill-founded. Not the overt emotional plea, the gruesomeness of the execution … Read more
A priest in Northern Virginia, a prominent defender of the liturgy, is often quoted as saying, “The problems in the Catholic Church in America are caused by Bing Crosby. Movies like The Bells of St. Mary’s never show him praying.” I heard this the day after my family had celebrated our annual reviewing of Fr. … Read more
My “Notes Toward Unity” (Sed Contra, October 1998) elicited more response than any column I have written in the past four years. Catholics around the nation are frustrated; they want their voice heard in the culture. More and more Catholics are tired of being invisible. We can only hope that the airing of the Kevorkian … Read more
In his previous encyclicals, the Holy Father has shown how truth has a moral beauty that shines through the lives of the saints. Now, in Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), our philosopher-pope explains why that light no longer shines through the work of most philosophers, as well as the corrosive effects of that darkness … Read more
The Bible says that in the last days our sins will be shouted from the rooftops. Well, a millennium of sorts has already arrived for some Washington politicians, both friend and foe. The brave new world of the media, fed relentlessly by the Internet and 24-hour cable news, has made that scenario almost literally possible. … Read more
Crisis has applauded the pope’s efforts to promote unity in the Church, his attempt to overcome divisions in the Body of Christ. To Orthodox, Jews, Protestants, to Catholics on the right and left, he has reached out, and his efforts, while not always successful, have born great fruit. How ironic, it seems, that those who … Read more
Dr. Bernard Nathanson recently addressed a riveted audience of the Philadelphia Legatus Chapter on a subject we all need to think more about—genetic research. It was clear, by the time he was through, that Catholic moral theology is already facing its greatest challenge since the advent of the pill. The difference is that arguments against … Read more
Few have written more wisely on the relation of art and culture than Jacques Maritain. In Art and Scholasticism, written just after the end of the World War I, Maritain traced the deterioration in modern art to the artist’s turn toward ideology. When the artist becomes preoccupied with communicating ideas, the beauty of what he … Read more
In multimillionaire investor Ted Forstmann we meet a man, a Catholic, who has become one of this nation’s leading philanthropists and who may be poised to head an educational revolution. As founding chairman of Empower American, a conservative grassroots organization whose Washington, D.C. offices are home to Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp, Forstmann has already … Read more