Father Catoir, the Maryknoll father who directs the Christophers, suggested in a recent article that things are not as bad with the Church as we may think. He drew attention to some heartening statistics on converts to Catholicism, he mentioned the reception the Pope gets wherever he goes, and . . . . But I … Read more
Catholic colleges and universities are now opened for the beginning of a new academic year and all the other private and public institutions have done the same. The academic year has always rivaled the calendar year for primacy, at least for much or our lives. On campuses, a year bridges calendar years, we begin in … Read more
After waking from his dogmatic slumber, Immanuel Kant wrote The Critique of Pure Reason in which he pronounced a requiescat over all preceding philosophy. But his attempt to begin ab ovo is done under the aegis of Ovid and Persius. In the preface he unabashedly quotes these Latin writers with the clear assumption that his … Read more
The great historians have distinctive voices and even when we are dubious about how they tell the story we go back to them again and again for the pleasure of seeing the world through their eyes and hearing once more their voice. Reading Marvin O’Connell encourages thoughts about what precisely historical narrative is. Aristotle, in … Read more
In his new encyclical released March 25th, Evangelium vitae, the Holy Father speaks of a culture of death, not as a threatening possibility, but as something that has already arrived. The phrase, I am told, is original with Cardinal O’Connor, so it seems unlikely that it is some dark and distant part of the globe … Read more
Many recent biographers of writers put the reader in the place of the psychiatrist. Norman Sherry’s life of Graham Greene, particularly the recently published second volume, puts the reader in the uncomfortable role of confessor. We are made privy to Greene’s infidelities, to the crumbling of his marriage and his eerie disinterest in his children, … Read more
When Ex corde ecclesiae, the document on the nature of the Catholic university, appeared a few years ago, I was a member of a panel on a campus other than my own. The topic under discussion was, serendipitously, I thought, the Catholic character of the institution which hosted the discussion. By sheer accident, I had … Read more
One of the more (diabolically) inspired ploys of those who favor abortion is to describe their position, not as pro-abortion, but as pro-choice. In so doing, advocates of abortion present themselves as once removed from the abortion vs. non-abortion debate. What they are advocating, they claim, is a free choice between the two. Their opponents, … Read more
The transfer of the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas from March 7, the anniversary of his death, to January 28, whatever the official explanation, had the appearance of a demotion. Leo XIII, in his 1879 encyclical Aeterni patris had singled Thomas out as the special mentor of both the Catholic philosopher and theologian. With the … Read more
The recent elections spread distaste for the centralization of power in Washington as well ass for the corresponding effort to micromanage a longe the affairs of the nation. Far more than the arrogance of those too long in power, what irks many are those unelected bureaucrats who have come to exercise such dictatorial powers over … Read more
Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon is a plea for standards in literary studies, a defense of those great works in our tradition which until quite recently have more or less uncontestedly made up the core of a humanistic education, and some charming reflections on some of the main figures and their writings. In the course … Read more
In Brian Moore’s Catholic, set in a future when modernists have taken over the Church, Father Kinsella is sent from Rome to investigate an Irish abbey where the old religion flourishes and is attracting the devout from around the world. It is the Latin Mass and the devotion with which it is said that draws … Read more
Catholics who have been confused, bemused, or disenchanted by the strange goings-on during the past quarter-of-a-century or so should be pleased to learn that help has arrived. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in standard as opposed to ideological English, is at last yours for the asking. You will find elsewhere in this issue an … Read more
When England went into a socialist nosedive and the level of culture and civility correspondingly sank, Evelyn Waugh said that the only way he could continue to live in his native land was to imagine that he was a tourist there. Since we have here no lasting city, there is a sense in which each … Read more
The first time I heard the story of the saint who said he’d just go on playing billiards if he learned he was to die in five minutes, I was surprised that the news came to him at the billiard table. Try to imagine Saint Sebastian with a cue or Saint Lawrence racking up the … Read more
There is a scene early on in Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World when a volor (helicopter) crashes on a London Street. Within a quince a grim crew arrives, drives off the curious and begins to attend the dying and wounded. They swiftly and efficiently put them to death. I am often reminded of … Read more
A fair rendering of animal rationale, the classical definition of the human being, is “the animal who talks.” Since humans exist in groups—we only come to be, and survive, in families—this entails listening as well as talking. Perhaps more listening than talking. In fact, there is an awful lot of organized listening going on. One … Read more
Michael Novak has been awarded the Templeton Prize for 1994, an enormous honor which puts him in the company of Mother Teresa and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I rejoice with him as a friend, colleague, and, over the past dozen years, comrade-in-arms in the publishing of Crisis. His wife, Karen, and their children must find this recognition … Read more
Not just the day or the hour but the how of it is hidden from us, but this does not dim our curiosity about the end of it all. Au contraire. The literature on the end of the world is rich and complex. The least interesting subset of this genre is of two kinds, terrestrial … Read more
In the Holy Land one can visit places that figure in the earthly life of Our Lord. In Rome one can visit the tombs of Peter and Paul and see the prison in which they were confined. At places like Notre Dame, at the end of a campus road, one finds the community cemetery and … Read more