Lent is a burden and a blessing. It calls Catholics to crawl beneath the weight of themselves to the Cross of Christ and come face to face with who they are. No one will be content with that vision. Most would rather hide from themselves, burying their being deep beneath distractions and denials. Lent is … Read more
A couple of months ago I was savaged on my campus on account of a title supplied by one of my editors: “My College Succumbed to the Totalitarian Diversity Cult.” I don’t know that Providence College has succumbed, but the next day somebody had written on the blackboard of my class, “Diversity is not a … Read more
God is the Most Real Being, so our religion is about what we accept as most real. It’s our basic understanding of the world, to which all our other views must accommodate themselves. That’s a problem. To all appearances, Catholics have pretty much the same basic understandings as other people. Otherwise, our thoughts and actions … Read more
Civility means to act as one would in a settled city wherein law and manners, not force and passion, guide the interchanges of the public order as well as the normal affairs of men within their homes and voluntary associations. Civility presupposes reason, but includes courtesy, compassion, and good taste. It usually involves a written … Read more
We hear a lot nowadays about the polarization in American politics, between the two parties and between conservatives and “progressives” (as liberals have come to be called). What is not mentioned is that, due especially to ideology, the great casualty of our current politics has been integrity. While politics is not known as a field … Read more
A couple of months ago I commented on how modern ways of thinking make it hard to understand human life. I didn’t say so specifically, but a big part of the problem has to do with the relation between law and freedom. The problem comes up in the scientific approach to knowledge. Scientists pursuing their investigations view … Read more
The success of a man may be measured in this life by the love of his friends and even by the hatred of his enemies. By this measure, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi was a very successful man when he passed utterly unexpectedly a few weeks ago from complications of the flu. His enemies danced on his … Read more
In 1938, the world was waiting for war. Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia. The United States was battling the Great Depression. The Great New England Hurricane had struck. And then, this was heard over the American radio waves: Streets are all jammed. Noise in crowds like New Year’s Eve in city. Wait a minute… Enemy now … Read more
My brother-in-law, Jerome Vertin, died in Chesapeake, Virginia, in hospice care at about five A.M. on February 25. My sister, his wife of sixty-three years, was with him when he died. She said that he seemed most peaceful in death. I thought: “This is the reality that marriage vows prepare a couple for, the ’till … Read more
As all human beings in their journeys of life make daily choices and important decisions, their destinies acquire a definite direction that guides their histories and shapes their future lives. While no person can control all the circumstances of his life, the behavior of other people, or the vicissitudes of fickle Fortune, he can control … Read more
Like all good Catholics, I hope very much that President Donald Trump follows through on his promises to pro-life Americans. It looks as though he will follow through in appointing a pro-life Supreme Court justice; obviously this is a tremendous blessing. Despite that, regular Crisis readers may recall that I have never harbored enthusiasm for … Read more
When the Supreme Court imposed phony marriage on the entire country, the LGBTs were left wondering what to do next, how to keep their issue boiling? Some of them, chief among them radio host/activist Michelangelo Signorelli, accurately predicted that the conservative Christian response would be to protect religious freedom, that the Christians would beg to … Read more
Everyone seems to agree that today there’s a growing gap between rich and poor, rulers and ruled, the center and the margins, elites and populace. The gap is economic, of course, but more importantly it’s social, cultural, and even spiritual. The New York Times, for example, recently admitted the obvious, that they and the rest … Read more
The imperial American judiciary has struck again. This time it has taken upon itself the prerogative to enter a domain that historically it shied away from: national security. A few weeks ago, a federal judge in Washington State stopped the implementation of President Trump’s executive order temporarily halting entry into the U.S. from seven Islamic-majority … Read more
The Pharisees tend to get a bad rap. Okay, maybe they deserve the criticism. But at the peak of their power they were known as a revolutionary movement. They were like T-totalers without a self-contradictory name. They were the religious radicals who decided to take piety seriously, very seriously in fact. And they were taken … Read more
We have Milo Yiannopoulos to thank that everyone all of a sudden cares about pederasty, even those who have never commented on it before. We can now expect an awakened pundit and policy class to notice one of the serious problems in the homosexual world. Right? In case you don’t know, almost overnight, the writer … Read more
Hollywood’s brush tends to paint the Vatican in colors dark and foreboding, a lavishly decorated place of simony and secret sexual sins. The papal throne is made to look smug and malevolent, even diabolical. Catholic priests are either buffoons or sex-crazed loonies. The laity are gullible, superstitious, or secretly Protestant. The HBO limited series The Young … Read more
It’s interesting to reflect sometimes on how humanity might remember the United States of America, centuries or millennia hence. Sometimes I think it will be remembered as a light to the nations, the proverbial City on a Hill. At other times, it seems to me that it will be remembered as a cautionary tale, proving … Read more
Populist movements are making striking gains throughout the Western world. Causes are not hard to find. Recent decades have seen widening social, economic, and cultural differences between ordinary people, who prefer what they are used to, and elites, who favor the global order now emerging, which is run in accordance with their outlook and interests. … Read more
Historical television dramas usually aren’t my cup of tea. They’re too preachy. Political correctness is irksome enough now; the last thing we need is to fight today’s culture wars yesterday. I realize how infuriating it must be for liberals that they are unable to bring deceased reactionaries back to life for their much-deserved tongue-lashings. Historical … Read more