In a recent column I noted that tradition is not self-contained or absolute. It’s complex, so that superior, subordinate, and parallel traditions often come into conflict. Local tradition may say one thing, Church or national tradition quite another. Also, tradition is not about itself but about goods toward which it’s oriented, so it’s relative to something … Read more
It has been said that Rome thinks in centuries. In the present age, however, it seems that Rome reacts in days. So Cardinal Sarah learned following a July 5 address on the liturgy, as the Vatican issued a clarification meant to quash speculation about the possibility of new enactments from Rome that would affect liturgical norms … Read more
In his new book The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin writes about how both the Right and the Left are waxing nostalgic—the Left, for the Camelot of the 1960s; the Right, for the Reagan Ranch of the 1980s. He may very well have a point—this explains the plethora of “Reagan Bush 1984” bumper stickers and t-shirts … Read more
“Pope Francis condemns more ‘blind violence’ after Nice attack,” reads a headline from a Catholic news agency. On behalf of the Holy Father, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, sent a telegram to the Bishop of Nice expressing the Pope’s sorrow: As France was celebrating her national holiday, the country was again struck by blind … Read more
In war, the inability or refusal to recognize the enemy’s intentions and capabilities has disastrous consequences. America experienced this on December 7, 1941. But as 9/11 and subsequent events have demonstrated, it is a lesson soon forgotten and often reviewed in sorrow and bitterness. Sadly, there is little reason to think that the leaders of … Read more
Hilaire Belloc’s Hills and the Sea was published in 1906. It is a collection of his journalism from that era in periodicals long since gone. Luckily for us, his writing remains. These 38 essays are a mix of reflection and philosophy, personal memoir, and travel writing—some with English settings, some foreign. In fact, the geography … Read more
Did you know that St. Maria Goretti was even the least bit controversial? The facts of her case are not disputed. She was a peasant girl of 11 who came under sexual assault from a twenty-year-old male who shared the building where she lived with her family. She resisted, telling him it would be a … Read more
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ∼ Charles Peguy It is not widely known among those who mourned the passing of Elie Wiesel, the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor who died July 2nd at age 87, … Read more
In a speech delivered to the Annual MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America) Convention in December 2015, Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), urged Muslim Americans to take up the cause of Black Lives Matter. “Black Lives Matter is our matter,” he said; “Black Lives … Read more
Australia has a program in its schools that, at first glance, you’d have to be crazy to be against. It’s called Safe Schools, and it is an anti-bullying campaign. Well, at least that’s how it has been promoted. In reality, Safe Schools has become a pro-LGBTQI indoctrination system designed by one academic Marxist with hopes … Read more
Melinda Selmys, familiar to the readers of Crisis as a leading voice among the gay Christian movement, recently wrote an essay she called “10 Reasons Why Homosexuality is Not a Natural Law Issue.” Her basic premise is “that trying to argue against homosexuality from a natural law point of view in contemporary discourse is about … Read more
“The Church has need especially of those who can do this [communicate the message] on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force. Christ Himself made extensive use of images in His preaching, fully in keeping with His willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the … Read more
When I was a lad of about six in the early 1960s, I went with my father to see my beloved Philadelphia Phillies play. At the time, my baseball hero was center fielder Tony Gonzales. Thrilled when he hit a home run to win the game in the bottom of the ninth inning, I could … Read more
We have a crisis of womanhood in our culture. Everyone knows it. Few admit it. Generations ago, the secular-humanists designed a brave new woman who is shrill, selfish, arrogant, and bossy (oh no! the ‘b’ word!). With a clarifying view to Scripture, we can see in retrospect that we have all (myself included) become—at least … Read more
It is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction—eastward or at least towards the apse—to the Lord who comes. ∼ Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect, Congregation for the Divine Worship, London, July 5, 2016. Symbols mean something. A nephew of … Read more
Another day, and more mayhem, with no end in sight. Five police officers assassinated, others wounded, by snipers at a Black Lives Matter protest, after two black men were killed recently in dubious circumstances by (white) police officers. And, of course, dozens have been killed by bombings in the Middle East, Sunni versus Shiite, and … Read more
It was heartening to hear Pope Francis denounce the Armenian genocide even though he knew it would incur the anger of the Turkish government (which denies the genocide charge). Dr. Lawrence Franklin, who was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, took the occasion as an opportunity to pen an article suggesting the … Read more
It has become a commonplace in Catholic circles in the pontificate of Pope Francis to discuss, debate, and interpret the pope’s writings, speeches, and (most controversially) off-the-cuff remarks. Yet with this, we have seen an accompanying phenomenon: we find ourselves talking not only about the pope’s recorded words, but about his alleged words as well. … Read more
In his extraordinary book Leftism, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, by way of showing that indeed all cultures are not equal and that colonialism was far from the unmitigated evil that students are now taught that it was, describes a peculiar custom practiced by the women of a tribe in southeast Asia. When a woman gives birth … Read more
The chaos of the present election cycle calls to mind a story about the great African king, Shaka (1787-1828), the founder of Southern Africa’s Zulu Empire. It is told that Shaka lamented the slowness of his warriors when they entered into battle. To remedy the problem, he ordered them to take off their sandals to … Read more