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
I recall how intimidated I was when, as a seminarian at the Pontifical North American College in the 1990s, the Swiss Guard took the pitch for our “friendly” game of soccer. Our team was dubbed “The North American Martyrs”—a funny nickname that stuck in those days because, more often than not, we were killed (sometimes … Read more
The United States Naval Academy is granting Satanist midshipmen a “study space” in which they may conduct “Satanic services” and study “Satanic philosophy,” according to a leaked email. This was not the first time I heard of this news, as Rod Dreher had previously documented the story at The American Conservative. The latest revelations of … 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
“Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” In the Church calendar, the days of holy feasts and solemnities go by with dizzying speed. And sometimes the chronology seems disordered. We might wonder, for example, why the Slaughter of the Innocents on December 28th comes before the Epiphany on January 6th. The short … Read more
There are some occasions when the editorial “we” is almost viscerally inadequate. Writing about my friend Peter Collier—the prolific biographer and novelist, literary impresario, and tireless cultural warrior—is one such. Although he made it a full decade beyond the biblically sanctioned allotment of three score and ten, the announcement early last month that Peter had … Read more
In the wake of the amusements surrounding the Vatican’s Amazon Synod, Pope Francis made an important statement at the conference of the International Association of Penal Law on November 15. Thereat the Holy Father declared: “We should be introducing—we were thinking—in the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, ecological sin against the … Read more
This past weekend, my 11-year-old daughter and I went to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood at the local theater. The movie, based on Mr. Rogers’s interaction and friendship with a hardscrabble magazine reporter, is a moving portrayal of the manner in which one’s tender love and care is able to transform a suffering … 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
Like a bird, Blessed Franz Jägerstätter built his nest high—up on the slopes of the Austrian mountains in the village of St. Radegund. Franz and his wife Franziska were living in an edenic alpine village amid all that is green and fresh. There, they quietly raised their three daughters, worked the fields, and loved each … Read more
On the night of November 8, 2019, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, after a long and heated debate, voted to adopt four gender terms into its code of conduct: “gender identity,” “gender expression,” “family status,” and “marriage status”. The chairman of the board, who supported the 8 to 4 vote, stated that “we need … Read more
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), famous in his time but hardly ever read and nearly forgotten today, wrote two brilliant satirical novels (Main Street and Babbitt) and one gentle, bittersweet, and genuinely moving one (Dodsworth, about an uncultured Midwestern automobile executive who takes his socially and culturally ambitious wife to Europe, where she betrays him with another … Read more
It is important to have a clear understanding of the meaning of a word before we use it. The word ecumenical is a case in point. Throughout history, until very recently, its meaning was connected to its etymological roots in Greek (oikoumene), in which it means literally “the inhabited (world)”, or more generally “the whole … Read more
“Jesus has now many lovers of His Heavenly Kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross. He has many desirous of His consolation, but few of His tribulation. He finds plenty of companions of His table, but few of His abstinence. All wish to rejoice with Christ, but few wish to bear anything for His sake. … Read more
Published seventy years ago, in 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a modern classic. As Americans in the Age of Oligarchy acquiesce to a mutable truth—a gospel according to Google—George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare is creeping into the American dream. Politicians openly lie. “Fake news” riddles the media. Moral relativism commonly and craftily validates immorality. It is all … Read more
Thirty-six years ago a small slim book crossed my desk at the offices of National Review in Manhattan. Its title was The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism; its author, Michael D. Aeschliman. I slipped it into my briefcase and began reading it over a martini on the flight back to Wyoming. At home, I finished … Read more
“Within five years,” said former French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, “the situation could become irreversible.” He was referring to the rising tide of violence resulting from Muslim immigration. His comment was from an interview that took place almost two years ago. If Collomb’s calculations are correct, France only has a few years “to avoid the … Read more
On November 4, this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign ended. During the campaign, a million Americans committed to fasting and praying for an end to abortion and healing for those affected by this tragedy. Even though the 2019 campaign has ended, there are many ways for pro-life Americans to continue to work towards making … Read more
British journalist Robert Fisk once stated, “The story of the Armenian genocide is one of almost unrelieved horror at the hands of Turkish soldiers and policemen who enthusiastically carried out their government’s orders to exterminate a race of Christian people in the Middle East.” The extermination of one and a half million Armenian Christians during … Read more