For several years now, it has become obvious that we have entered into the era of the Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church. All the metrics in places like the U.S., Europe, and Latin America are heading in the wrong direction. Even the weekly Mass attenders have an alarming number of people who embrace heterodox beliefs and … Read more
On August 15–17, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, New York. Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of this monumental cultural event that marked an epoch. Woodstock changed America. It helped usher in a period of moral devastation. The event enshrined free love as acceptable in … Read more
The negation of Mary is directly linked to the anti-feminine, anti-maternal, and anti-family nihilism that grips us today. Long a stumbling block for Protestants, Mary is increasingly rejected and mocked in the godless, death-infatuated cultures that stand strongest in formerly Protestant, but now almost entirely atheistic, lands. The story of Mary, however, helps bring to … Read more
You’ve read the Amazon synod’s neo-pagan, pantheistic Instrumentum Laboris, relishing Pope Francis’s “mantra” that “everything is connected” (n. 25). You’ve reread Laudato Si, letting yourself be pierced by “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (n. 49). But you still want to delve deeper into the spirit of the Amazon synod. … Read more
Two elderly priests I know have offered complementary insights into our current cultural crisis: “Social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering,” and “Those who win the language wars win the culture wars.” Language carefully hones, shapes—or distorts—our culture. And, since language is our medium for comprehension, our use of language directly impacts our ability to … Read more
The crisis facing the Church at this time has challenged the faith of countless Catholics in the durability of the Rock, which is the Church as promised by Christ. In an effort to avoid precisely this loss of trust, many in the hierarchy went to extraordinary lengths to keep the problems of abuse by the … Read more
With the continued normalization of vice in modern life, the idea of preserving or recovering innocence seems somewhat irrelevant. For most people, a return to innocence is more likely to bring to mind a new age hit single from the nineties than a serious societal concern. Today, only a few parents (usually of the Mormon … Read more
I wrote here at Crisis back in March 2018 about the all-too-common link between mass shooters and fatherlessness. That was in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida incident. Looking at a list of the worst mass shooters in U.S. history, it was clear that the vast majority came from broken families lacking a consistent biological … Read more
The so-called Long Lent just keeps getting longer. The myriad sex abuse scandals have damaged her public witness and weakening the faith of her members. Several high-ranking prelates have been mired in corruption charges, most recently Bisjop Michael J. Bransfield of Charleston-Wheeling. Catholic public figures whose dogma “lives loudly” within them, in turn, have been … Read more
One would assume a radical pope like Francis would at least keep a few token conservatives in his entourage. On the contrary: many of his appointees are well to the Left of his own public image. Much can be gleaned about the Holy Father’s mind by studying the men he entrusts with power and authority. … Read more
Truths become truisms by being true. Shakespeare may have got some of his Aristotle through Ben Jonson; in any case, he has Polonius quoting the philosopher’s truism about night following the day. This is a roundabout way of saying that certain untutored impulses are inevitable, and one of them now is the annually predictable petition … Read more
Nobody blamed the truck when 29-year-old Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov rented a pickup from Home Depot 18 months ago and deliberately mowed down a dozen pedestrians and bicyclists in New York City, killing eight. There was no lobbying for background checks or more laws around vehicle rentals. Yet every time there’s a mass shooting, political … Read more
One of the perils of living in America, ostensibly a democracy, is that we might start to think our elected officials represent the majority and are trying to justly balance various minority perspectives with the majority’s opinion. Believing this would be a mistake. A quick look at the issue of abortion shows just how little … Read more
If there was ever any doubt that Pope Francis’s Vatican regime is determined to subvert the doctrines of Pope John Paul II, the shameless conduct of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute’s new administration ought to stand as indisputable proof. Followers of Saint John Paul II were apprehensive after the Institute fell into the hands … Read more
The Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6th tends to be overlooked: stuck in the middle of summer, not a holy day of obligation, with a Gospel reading generally co-opted by the Second Sunday of Lent. But that’s no reason to overlook it, because transfiguration is not just a one-time event in Jesus’s life. Transfiguration … Read more
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Six hundred Chestertonians convened in Kansas City last week for the American Chesterton Society’s annual convention, hailing from as far afield as India and Kenya. It was a jubilant occasion, as always, though not without one disappointment. On the first evening, ACS President Dale Ahlquist read aloud a letter from Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, … Read more
We are an extraordinarily intolerant people. We take pride in our intolerance, though we don’t call it by that name. The tolerant person sees something bad and, for reasons of prudence or clemency, he bears with it. He sees his cousin drinking too much at a party; he ascertains that the cousin will not be … Read more
“Where men are forbidden to honor a king,” C.S. Lewis warned, “they honor millionaires, athletes or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.” I suppose the gentle don never considered what might happen if men were given a … Read more
A friend took me to lunch at the Harvard Club in New York City some years ago. When the food arrived, he looked around at the Masters of the Universe, he said: “Let’s shock the locals.” He then proceeded to cross himself and a say a blessing. I was shocked unto tears by something similar, … Read more
There’s a crisis of manhood in the American Church. You know it; I know it. But if our bishops are anything other than totally oblivious, they’re playing it cool. In July of 2017, I attended a USCCB convocation in Orlando, Florida. Its stated goal was finding new ways to spread the joy of the Gospel … Read more