Editor’s note: December’s “Catholic Home Library” feature was popular with readers and contributors alike, and so we offer several more suggestions for leisurely reading and meditation as the new year begins. Leisure Instead of Illusion Any honest list of books recommended around Christmas time will necessarily be brief, Christmas being the holiday currently designed as … Read more
Editor’s note: To assist Catholic readers generally, and Catholic parents specifically, to build a “Catholic Home Library,” Crisis has secured from several of our contributors and other serious readers well-known to us their recommendations from among the world’s countless books. We deem this but the first of what we foresee as a series on the … Read more
For a magazine called Crisis which makes bold to challenge the sundry crises of our time in Church and culture, the Tenth Anniversary Dinner convened by the journal in October was a merry affair. From the Call to Order by U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, through the Benediction by His Excellency Agostino Cacciavillan, Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to … Read more
Populate or Perish Twenty-five years ago Pope Paul VI published Humanae Vitae. Since it has to do with sex, it is the one papal encyclical nearly everybody has heard of. The document plunged the Catholic Church into a turmoil from which it is only now beginning to recover, and it was greeted by the secular … Read more
Ratzinger and the Terrorists Oxford—A few years ago Cardinal Ratzinger made a brief foray to England. He came mainly to give the annual Fisher Lecture in Cambridge, although his presence did give a boost to sales of The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger by the Cambridge Dominican Father Aidan Nichols (the Cardinal was to be seen … Read more
The Crisis in Anglo-Catholicism Oxford—I was away from England at the time of the crucial Low Week meeting of the bishops of England and Wales (19-22 April), at which time a formal response was agreed to by the disenchanted High Anglicans wishing to be reconciled with Rome after their own Synod had passed a resolution … Read more
Second-Hand Straw Dr. Ralph Mclnerny, the co-founder and publisher of Crisis, was selected to receive the 1993 Aquinas Medal, the highest honor of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (ACPA). The medal was conferred March 29, at the banquet of the Association’s Sixty-seventh Annual Meeting in Saint Louis, Missouri. Among the previous recipients of this award … Read more
This open letter to President Clinton was drafted by Hadley Arkes, the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College. He served several years as the Visiting Leavey Professor at Georgetown University, and he is the parent of a graduate of Georgetown in the class of 1990. He has preserved his connection to Georgetown through his … Read more
E Pluribus Unum? Like most Americans, I looked forward to the inauguration of a new president as a reaffirmation of the democratic system, a time when all Americans can put aside our differences for a few hours and simply share the experience of pride in our country, its institutions, and traditions. Despite my own partisanship … Read more
Virtually every survey in recent years demonstrates a remarkably high level of dissatisfaction among Americans with motion pictures and with popular culture in general. I have just published a book that asks the question, Why? What’s the problem, is the camera out of focus? The camera work is dazzling. In the most wretched pieces of … Read more
The View from the Ellipse Right-to-Life Day, 1993. I felt I should be at the Ellipse for Nellie Gray’s Rally on this twentieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This year’s rally was ominously different. The man who was outside my window in triumph at Georgetown on the Monday before, greeting the diplomatic corps, was about … Read more
A Close Call By a narrow majority the Supreme Court rejected lower federal court rulings that Operation Rescue had conspired to deprive women seeking abortions of their right to interstate travel. At stake in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic is the scope and application of the first clause of the 1871 Civil Rights Act, … Read more
CONSERVATIVES AGAINST THE STATUS QUO There are no conservative Catholics. This assertion is intended not to register relief or alarm but is stated simply to make the logical point that no man conserves what he has not inherited. Inheritance in this context refers to the kind of acquisition that requires no effort on the part … Read more
Election Night in the Neighborhood On November 3, I waited for the election returns at the Ridgewood, Queens headquarters of my congressional candidate, Dennis Shea. The 31-year-old nominee of the Republican and Conservative parties ran an extraordinary campaign against incumbent Tom Manton, the check-bouncing Queens County Democratic boss. The seat, once held by Geraldine Ferraro, … Read more
Bad Exports “We are not interested in the market socialism dreams of leftist liberal economists from the East Coast of the United States,” remarks Vaclav Klaus, finance minister of Czechoslovakia. “Right now, the main obstacle to our development is ideological infiltration from the West.” Don’t we in the United States have something better to send … Read more
Free Speech for Whom? At a recent conference sponsored by the State University of New York, I debated the issue of free speech on campus with Nadine Stroessen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Stanley Fish, professor of English at Duke University. What emerged from our conversation was highly instructive about the ACLU’S … Read more
The Words Not Spoken The Democratic Party, in its desire to retain an uncompromising pro-abortion stance during the convention, refused to permit a public podium to the governor of Pennsylvania, Robert P. Casey, who is a pro-life Catholic. Casey’s prepared statement is an indictment of a major political party’s refusal to take seriously the concerns … Read more
A Modest Proposal Both Bush and Clinton emphasize the need to discourage abortions and to reduce the number of abortions performed. These positions are consistent with those of the general American public, which views abortion as morally wrong whether or not it is legal. Amherst Professor Hadley Arkes, a CRISIS contributor, has drafted a proposal … Read more
Our Gallup-Given Rights Thanks to the latest poll released by the Gallup Organization on June 18, we Catholics now know what God should do with His old-fashioned rules. And so do the American Bishops since, by some stroke of divine luck, the poll coincided with their meeting on the role of women in the Church. … Read more
Dear Colin: For some time, I have been troubled by your comments before Congress in February about the suitability of gay and lesbian Americans for service in our nation’s armed forces. On the one hand, I was pleased to see you admit that the exclusionary policy is no longer defended for national security purposes. As … Read more