Just before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, a group of Evangelicals issued a statement reaffirming the ancient teachings of Christianity about homosexual practice, the definition of marriage, and transgenderism. Calling it “The Nashville Statement,” churchmen from a variety of evangelical traditions drafted a document aimed at catechizing the people of God. Hurricane Harvey quickly overwhelmed this … Read more
Submission. That’s what the word “Islam” means. Muslims must submit to Allah, and the rest of the world must eventually submit to Islam. Submission does not necessarily require conversion, but it does require that one acknowledge the superiority of Islam, pay the jizya tax, and, in general, keep one’s head down. Europe is currently in … Read more
“You can’t die in every ditch.” It was a favorite saying of Fr. Ed Madden, my pastor and boss, when I was a greenhorn DRE back in Boulder. So many problems, so many complaints, so many challenges crop up in the course of ordinary parish work, and I was motivated (at first) to tackle them … Read more
James Martin SJ gallivants around the country telling young men and women that their sexual lifestyles are acceptable to the Church, which is not true; that the Church welcomes them no matter what they may be doing, which is certainly true. James Martin SJ tells them that the teachings of the Church will probably change … Read more
No artifact shapes our daily lives so much as the smartphone. Most of us are ashamed by our dependence on them, but we don’t consider tossing them out—for that seems impossible to do. Nor apparently, do many parents consider withholding them from teenagers, so necessary they seem to the new shape of social life. So … Read more
One of the recurrent themes throughout St. Augustine’s Confessions is the nature of beauty and how beauty leads Augustine toward truth, goodness, and wisdom. Beauty is a gateway to truth, and no one better reflected this in his writings than Augustine. The rejection of beauty in our contemporary society, including from within the Church, has … Read more
It has been much harder than I expected to explain to Westerners why Muslims, even the moderate ones, behave the way they do. How does one describe the trees to a kid who only ever saw the desert? Even though it is fading, Christianity has been in the very fabric of the West, making all … Read more
With sonorous tones on the annual Founder’s Day in my school, the Reverend Sub-Dean clad in his academicals would slowly recite the long list of those who had contributed of their substance over the years. The Very Reverend Dean kept sober vigil from his stall. The roster was long because the annals were long, and the … Read more
Following Fr. Schall—who nudged me home to the Church some years back—I do a bit of evangelizing by recommending—or when feeling rich, giving—books to people. Hanging around secular universities the past 40 years, I’ve met a lot of left-liberal academics, most of whom are practical if not ideological atheists. Some of these are, like me, … Read more
Harvey, Irma, and Jose are the latest in a long list of recent disasters inflicting widespread violence on man and nature. In 2011, a super outbreak of tornadoes claimed the lives of over 340 people in the Southeast. In Alabama whole communities were wiped off the map. Within a few miles of my home in … Read more
“I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” ∼ Tocqueville, Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville was the great French chronicler of the early United States. Nearly 200 years ago, he spotted a basic tension in our national character. It’s this: Americans place … Read more
Just two months after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) declared a nominee to federal office to be unfit for daring to hold the personal belief that Jesus Christ is necessary to salvation (which was discussed at Crisis by your faithful correspondent here), a fresh controversy has arisen in the hearing chambers of the capitol. This time, … Read more
Many believe that Christendom was a rigid and brutal order. In medieval times, we are told that tyranny ruled, and the Church and the nascent State were constant rivals in the pursuit of dominance. So many modern historians have cynically reduced this period when Christianity prevailed to a time of cultural darkness and violent power … Read more
After his confrontation with Ahab and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, where he called fire down from heaven and killed those prophets, Elijah fled for his life, first to Beersheba then to Horeb (I Kings 18:16-19:18). At Horeb the Lord appeared to Elijah, but before this appearance, the prophet experienced a powerful windstorm, … Read more
On August 21, the Vatican released Pope Francis’s 2018 message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, a commemorative feast established by Pope Pius X in 1914. The message collects some of Francis’s now well-known considerations regarding migration, bringing them together into a four-point program: “to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate.” … Read more
People are very upset about white nationalism just now, so much so that concern has turned into moral panic. Respectable people condone, connive at, or openly call for extra-legal violence to suppress it. So far as I can tell, there are very few people who propose establishing a white national state, and far fewer who hold … Read more
The bishops of the United States roundly condemned President Trump’s new plan to possibly end the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in six months unless the Congress passes legislation to authorize the program. (Trump is only possibly ending it since he tweeted later that he will revisit the issue if Congress does not make … Read more
Gather round, my children. Perhaps I should have explained this before Charlottesville and Berkeley, though I never thought you would hear me. Years ago you read this poem. You said you didn’t understand it, but really you were just having too much fun in those days to pay it much attention: Turning and turning in … Read more
There is within our present society a profound and pervasive sensitivity that something is amiss, a deep and desperate yearning for things higher than our modern materialistic society has within its power to offer. Burrowed in the innermost secret place of every man and woman there is a sense, an inherent knowledge, that much of … Read more
The recent rage to knock down statues of men deemed to be evil has reminded me of an episode of The Twilight Zone. That series, which I believe was the best that television has ever gotten, mingled Greek tragedies with Christian morality plays, and sometimes the screenplays partook of both. That is the case with … Read more