“Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.” ~ St. Paul to the Thessalonians A former student of mine is thinking of becoming a Catholic, and she had a question for me. “I don’t understand the deuterocanonical books,” she ventured. … Read more
For about forty years, the public high school in my home town did not have a basketball court. They finally supplied the lack when they and two towns got together into the fourteenth plague of Egypt, the Consolidated School District, and built an enormous complex in no man’s land, inaccessible by foot to all but … Read more
Death and sex for kids—Halloween is scarier than ever. Given the trends, there is little wonder why many Catholics hold Halloween as more trick than treat nowadays. One of the wildest perversions of the Christian calendar is that the holy day before All Saints Day, All Hallows’ Eve, is now an unholy day of fear … Read more
One can be a ghost or a spirit. One can dwell in a Grey City and restlessly move constantly to new neighborhoods or abide in the Bright World and enjoy everlasting peace. One can confine pleasure to cinemas and fish and chips or delight in abounding spiritual joy. One can live in the shadowy grayness … Read more
Recent developments make me wonder if Church leaders and Catholic institutions in the U.S. are not, “on the unawares,” helping to further crucial parts of the secularist-leftist political and cultural narrative. Several months ago, on a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border one high-ranking prelate criticized “the xenophobic ranting of a segment of the population” on … Read more
This past summer my junior honors theology students read The Hobbit in preparation for their morality class this fall. While reading, I discovered why so many enjoy The Hobbit. We can connect so well with Bilbo Baggins and the other characters because they are so real, so like us. One can also find many “hidden” … Read more
In a recent Crisis essay, I indicated that the recovery of tradition, reverence and symbolism in sacred architecture is not limited only to newly built churches, but that it has also been on the increase in existing church renovations in recent years. Some of the most jarring evidence of internal unsettledness in the Church over … Read more
Every era has its own brand of humor. Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas were the toast of Victorian London; the Marx Brothers’ buffoonery left 1930s audiences roaring with laughter in their theater seats, and Brian Regan’s honest, contagious humor has entertained us for nearly two decades. Satire, that darker strain of humor, is almost always … Read more
It’s one of those gorgeous September afternoons when Minnesota seems like a slice of paradise, rather than a stage of Purgatory. I’m sitting on a park bench watching small boys (my own three, plus a few they just met on the playground) pretend to kill one another. It’s truly a beautiful sight. “I shall slay … Read more
Social liberals consider traditional moral restrictions cruel in their very essence. Each of us, they believe, should be as free as possible to pursue his happiness as he sees it, consistent with the equal ability of others to do the same. To reject that position, as Catholics and other moral traditionalists do, is either intentionally … Read more
The sequel to Tom Brown’s School Days that culminates in Tom’s graduation from Rugby and his formation as an honorable Christian gentleman who embodies Dr. Arnold’s ideal of “muscular Christianity”—moral courage in the battleground of good versus evil that corresponds to the “pluck” that Tom displays on the rugby field and in the cricket match—this … Read more
A goofy guy named Adam Weinstein writing for a goofy website called Gawker has called for the jailing of those who deny global warming. Weinstein says, “there is the body of purulent pundits, paid sponsors, and corporate grifters who exploit the smallest uncertainty at the edges of a settled science.” Those who disagree with Weinstein … Read more
In Empire of Souls, Stefania Tutino offers a fresh perspective on the central role Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) played in the development of post-Reformation Catholicism, and its relationship to the early modern state. Tutino complements her study with a newly published collection of writings, never before translated into English, that she believes best represents Bellarmine’s political … Read more
Dialoguers say the darndest things. The conclusion to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document, Revelation: Catholic and Muslim Perspectives, contains the following: “Both Jesus and Muhammad loved and cared for all whom they met, especially the poor and oppressed.” Would that include the seven hundred men of the Qurayza tribe who were beheaded … Read more
Alvaro Del Portillo died in his sleep on March 23, 1994. He would have preferred it that way: unnoticed, without fuss, and as ordinary an end to any man’s life as is possible. It was a fitting conclusion to one who had spent all his life as an apostle of the sanctity of ordinariness, now … Read more
In February 2002, Aaron D. Wolf, the associate editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, and I spent a full day at the local Islamic school and mosque in Rockford, Illinois. After lunch, we had the opportunity to sit down with a group of students, handpicked by the principal, to discuss their experiences at … Read more
The Catholic Church in the United States is enduring a protracted vocation crisis. Numbers of priests dwindle even as the Catholic population increases. Many clergy as well as lay apostolates such as the SERRA Club and parish vocations committees have done much to stem the tide in an effort to encourage young men to discern … Read more
Judging by the media reports on the Extraordinary Synod to be held in Rome this October, the bishops present will be mainly concerned with issues such as the admission to the Eucharist of divorced and remarried persons, the speeding up of annulment processes, and the possible revision of the Church’s teaching on contraception. Implicit in … Read more
Islam has no central or definitive body or figure authorized to define what exactly it is. Opinions about its essence and scope vary widely according to the political or philosophic background of its own interpreters. The current effort to establish an Islamic State, with a designated Caliph, again to take up the mission assigned to … Read more
Never such innocence again. — Philip Larkin, MCMXIV By the time the Armistice ending the Great War was signed 11 November 1918—the Guns of August having at last fallen silent—four bloody years of lethal destruction had elapsed, leaving the Old European Order in ruins, its pretensions shattered beyond recall. In the bitter aftermath of disillusion … Read more