The Decline of the Catholic Vote
The midterm election is now well behind us, and the statisticians have calibrated the Catholic vote. Perhaps the busy reader would like an abridged summary: There is no Catholic vote. Why?
The midterm election is now well behind us, and the statisticians have calibrated the Catholic vote. Perhaps the busy reader would like an abridged summary: There is no Catholic vote. Why?
As happens every four years, a presidential election has taken place. The victors of these contests have been varied in talent and temperament. Some have been truly heroic, and politically unambitious, accepting, rather than angling, for office. The first exemplar of these usually contradictory qualities was George Washington. Another was… well, you see the problem. … Read more
Washington, Missouri, until a few weeks ago, was blessedly free from the progressive currents electrifying the cities of the coasts and the upper Midwest. An eavesdropping visitor would have found Democrats sitting cheek to jowl with Republicans, talking in mild midwestern tones—as though civility mattered more than “conviction.” If someone had proposed tearing down a … Read more
In classic Russian fiction the writer often conceals the exact location and even the name of a character. In any story by Chekov or Dostoyevsky, you run across memes like this: It so happened last autumn that an officer on leave, Captain N., missed his footing while stepping off the train in the town of … Read more
In an earlier Crisis essay, I recalled the dismay at a social gathering when the host, a graduate of a Jesuit university, learned that his guest was a “bead counter.” Liberal Christians approve, and are even known to practice, the social gospel; however, they suspect a conflict between corporal works and spiritual devotions such as … Read more
“They count rosaries…. Please don’t laugh.” ∼ Pope Francis Thomas De Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by turns glamorizing and ruing his dependence, was first printed anonymously in 1821. Its succès de scandale emboldened the father of addiction literature to acknowledge paternity in an official edition the following year. Literary cachet notwithstanding, quotidian journals didn’t approve. … Read more
Look to the generals, the great patrons and architects, the captains of industry, and the princes of the Church for a gauge of an institution’s vitality. Virile epochs, however tumultuous, make way for a Charlemagne, an Abbot Suger, a Carnegie, or a Leo the Great. In effete, self-doubting times, froth and effluvium ride the waves … Read more
On July 17, 1918, an event occurred that clarified the meaning of the subsequent century of Communist revolutions. Czar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their five comely children, and a few steadfast friends were shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned to death in a basement in the Ural Mountains. The purge was executed by a vanguard of the … Read more
In the city of St. Louis there are two great churches honoring its namesake—the “old” cathedral, a Greek revival edifice sitting on a block dedicated for church use by the city’s founder, Pierre Laclede, in 1764; and the “new” Basilica of St. Louis, a massive green-domed neo-byzantine structure adorned with the world’s largest interior expanse … Read more
On the Saturday following Trump’s inauguration the capital was clogged with another mass rally—the Women’s March on Washington. At first described as “spontaneous” by the media, it gradually leaked out that the whole thing had been planned—by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, CAIR, Move-On, and approximately fifty left-wing groups infused with cash from rich Uncle Soros. Reliance … Read more
In an unforgettable scene in the film Dr. Zhivago, the adaptable lawyer Komarovski bellows from the foot of the frozen stairs, where he had been flung by the eponymous hero: “We’re all made from the same clay, you know!” Komarovski, whose name suggests “mosquito” in Russian, is not a card-carrying communist, but a broad-minded member … Read more
During the Second World War, C.S. Lewis gave a series of radio talks that were to become the bestseller known as Mere Christianity. In his introduction, Lewis says his purpose is to “explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.” Lewis skirts issues that have divided Protestants … Read more
A parish priest that I’ve known for years, though politically savvy, doesn’t follow the Democrat debates. Refreshingly cynical about both parties, he knows that to say the Forces of Darkness are presently arrayed against the Camp of the Saints would be a half-truth; he still insists on distinctions: “That party promotes everything that is evil.” … Read more
“Dhimmitude,” like takfir and sharia, is a word of which Americans were happily ignorant not so long ago. Events, unfortunately, have expanded our Arabic vocabulary. As with other Islamic concepts, the meaning of dhimmitude, even its existence, is contested among Muslims. And misuse is not always merely semantic for those prone to issuing fatwas. No … Read more
In one of Baudelaire’s spleen poems called “The Generous Gambler,” a boulevardier is steered by a “Mysterious Being” into a subterranean casino. There they drink and chat till dawn, gambling all the while. The Mysterious Being proves an urbane and chatty devil, old fashioned in manners, but progressive in philosophy. The only time he’d ever … Read more
On three different occasions, my wife and I chaperoned student tours to Paris. Looking over my journals now, post-Charlie Hebdo, I notice that on each of these trips there was occasion to record uneasy incidents with Arabs who seemed determined to disrupt the fabled joie de vivre of Parisian life. Truth to tell, the Parisians … Read more