Pro-life America will march the Washington Mall on January 24, 2020, to protest the Supreme Court’s 1973 (Roe v. Wade) and 1992 (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) rulings to make abortion accessible without “undue burden” of law. Though January marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this year the March for Life is looking ahead to … Read more
The Two Popes is not so much a picture as it is propaganda. The Netflix original follows the mode of the liberal media, presenting imagined interactions and conversations between Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis (when he was Cardinal Bergoglio) that further an agenda that is bent on denouncing the Catholic Church with slick cinematography. … Read more
Fearing that New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College is at risk of losing its Catholic identity, and that their voices will be silenced, members of the order of Benedictine monks of Saint Anselm Abbey—the monastic order that founded the college—have filed a lawsuit against Saint Anselm’s Board of Trustees. The lawsuit, filed on November 27th in Hillsborough … Read more
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the January 1991 print edition of Crisis Magazine. Nothing is deader than dead politics, we have been told. Why, then, revive the political essays of the philosopher, polemicist, and Catholic publicist Orestes Brownson (1803-1897)? Because the questions raised by Brownson confront us still. The “American Idea,” much discussed … Read more
During and after the grim martial law period in the early 1980s, many freedom-minded Poles would greet each other on January 1 with a sardonic wish: “May the new year be better than you know it’s going to be!” As 2020 opens, that salutation might well be adopted by Catholics concerned about the future of … Read more
As Time cries, “Advance!”, we look back on a year that might fill the mouth of Time with lamentation. The Syrian civil war, the Christchurch mosque massacre, economic collapse in Venezuela, Hong Kong protests, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Sri Lanka Easter terror attack, the Notre-Dame fire, and political upheaval in America. What is … Read more
On December 17, the day the first “O Antiphon” signaled the intensification of preparations for Christmas, the Church read the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel: writing for a predominantly Jewish-Christian audience, the evangelist stresses that the blessings promised to and through Abraham, and the dynastic promises made to King David, are about to be … Read more
Editor’s note: the Rev. James V. Schall, SJ, joined Crisis Magazine as a columnist in January of 1983. He passed away in April. On this second day of Christmas, we honor him by republishing this timely and timelss column, which originally appeared in the December 1995 print edition of Crisis. Requiescat in Pace, Father Schall. … Read more
I had heard that this store went “all out” at Christmas, but I was still taken aback. Ten-foot-tall nutcrackers, sprawling miniature villages, plush snow unicorns, plastic pine trees encrusted with glitter and glass, jingle bell muzak at high volume, seasonally garish sweaters, gigantic drummer boys para-pum-pum-pumming, a marshmallow army of leering lawn inflatables, and a … Read more
The incorporation of Anglican hymnody into English-language Catholic worship is one of the great blessings of the past 50 years. And within that noble musical patrimony, Ralph Vaughan Williams surely holds pride of place among modern composers. Well do I remember the summer day in 1965 when I heard a massed chorus of men and … Read more
Editor’s note: Fr. George William Rutler was ordained in the Anglican Church 50 years ago today. All of the friends and followers wishing to mark the occasion with him wouldn’t fit in Yankee Stadium. We offer a small selection here. I was first blessed to meet Father George Rutler in Rome, where he was … Read more
They say the homosexual scenes in the new Elton John biopic are the most titillating ever in a mainstream movie. They make Brokeback Mountain look like Bringing Up Baby. Less discussed, perhaps, is the fact that ordinary Catholic pew-sitters paid for it via their Peter’s Pence donations to the Pope. The cash came from a … Read more
There was an underbelly ripple when the news broke that Victoria’s Secret had called off its Christmas season “fashion show,” a prime-time network TV event featuring provocative displays of risqué lingerie. Cancel culture analysts have conjectured at an awareness of the brand’s lack of “body diversity” together with a growing sensitivity to the problem of … Read more
Word is that the USCCB is going to tweak the New American Bible but leave it in place as the basis for the lectionary. Please, your excellencies, give it up. The NAB is a train wreck. It cannot be salvaged. It is, by turns, drab, ungrammatical, clumsy, and stupid. It turns good verbs into verbal … Read more
Bishop Richard J. Malone of the Diocese of Buffalo is “retiring” a couple of years early. After seven years of allegedly allowing priests accused of statutory rape and unwanted touching to remain in ministry, after concealing hundreds of pages of damning litigation documents from the public, after being secretly recorded calling an active parish priest … Read more
To look at our diocese, you might assume it’s on the liberal side. Located in Northern Virginia and established in 1974, most of the newer churches (and there are many of them) are “in the round.” You know the ones—they look like spaceships. Needless to say, these triumphs of modern ecclesial architecture generally exclude altar … Read more
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the January 1988 print edition of Crisis Magazine. It has been edited for brevity. CRISIS: Is abortion really a political issue? It seems not. After all, politics is a dispute over the arrangements by which a community lives. Abortion raises a prior question: who belongs to the community? … Read more
My late parents loved Cardinal George Pell, whom they knew for decades. So I found it a happy coincidence that, on November 12 (which would have been my parents’ 70th wedding anniversary), a two-judge panel of Australia’s High Court referred to the entire Court the cardinal’s request for “special leave” to appeal his incomprehensible conviction … Read more
This Thanksgiving holiday provided a striking example of political correctness at its worst, aiming at undercutting our nation’s history and traditions and engaging in the usual over-embellishing of one of the Left’s favored minority groups and denigration of the majority. In this case, the favored group was American Indians and the denigrated group was, of … Read more
Thanksgiving is an occasion for gratitude. That being the case, Thanksgiving essays commonly exhort readers to look past the food and lift their minds to higher things. Properly understood, the turkey is not the main course, so much as a delightful side dish that can fuel warm reflections on family, home, nature, and creation as a … Read more