Out of Egypt I called My son – Hosea 11:1 In the Gospel of Matthew, the advent of the Messiah is followed by an abrupt departure. Almost immediately after the Magi visit them, the Holy Family takes off for Egypt, Joseph having been warned in a dream that King Herod would kill his Son. The … Read more
Prior to an April visit to Argentina, I read the “Aparecida Document,” the final report of the Fifth General Assembly of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM), which was held in Brazil in 2007. This master plan for the New Evangelization in Latin America is rather long–20-times longer than the Gospel of … Read more
We’ve all gotten the message from a well-meaning coworker or friend: they’ve heard of some misfortune or illness you’ve suffered and they tell you that you’re “in their thoughts” or that they are “sending you positive feelings.” You’re left wanting to thank them but wondering just what, exactly, such a sentiment actually means. The power … Read more
As I was saying before we were interrupted by the time and space constraints of May, we will now address some of the fine music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that recent CD releases have made available to us. As usual, my focus is on composers whose works were, quite undeservedly, nearly … Read more
Like many cities around the world last summer, Montreal saw “Occupy Montreal” protests, with people taking over and camping in downtown spaces. These protests abated during our harsh winter months, but February saw a new protest theme emerge with students from across the province participating. College and university tuition fees for Quebec residents (voters!) have … Read more
Professor Mark Bauerlein has recently argued in Public Discourse that liberalism, or the moral and epistemological relativism it engenders, starves literature of the narratives that alone can provide a work with meaning. Indeed it suggests that meaning itself is an illusion; and, once that is said, art disappears, and only the wraith of escapism, or … Read more
Writing about Mother’s Day is a joy. But writing about Father’s Day is sadder and more difficult. Today more than half ofU.S. children spend at least a part of their childhoods living apart from their fathers. How do we do justice to Father’s Day in an increasingly fatherless society? I had a good father, and … Read more
“But if you stay in a room you never see things.” Something magical occurs when a child who remains indoors goes outside to play. Something amazing happens when a lonely child discovers a friend and delights in companionship. Something great follows when a loving father or mother surprises a child with a gift and the … Read more
When we open our newspapers on Father’s Day, we expect to find something nice about dads—often heroic dads. Yet, for every boy or girl whose father was a doctor or Marine who stormed the beaches of Normandy, there is a dad who was more complicated; not a great dad but one still loved and had … Read more
Since the Enlightenment, rationalists have liked to cite witch burning as a prime example of medieval ignorance and religious (usually Catholic) bigotry run amok. (Leftists today still denounce it as a cynical plot by the strong against the weak.) Writing history that way was simple: Historians catalogued horrors, disparaged religion (or at least someone else’s … Read more
When St. Paul said in Ephesians 6 that our struggle was not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, he was not kidding. What we might add today is that the principalities and powers have shrewdly made sure that the struggle is precisely over our “flesh and blood,” over the very meaning of … Read more
In a our present milieu where dogs are our darling pets, fed on choice delicacies, shampooed and bathed in fancy dog tubs, housed in designer kennels, and taken around for joy rides sometimes in flamboyant doggy clothes, canine fans may be puzzled by the derision dogs receive in the pages of the New and Old … Read more
News reports inform us that members of the Scottish Parliament have for the first time voted in favor of Scotland becoming independent. Here is a snippet from the Stornoway Gazette: First Minister Alex Salmond hailed the vote, by 69 to 52, as a “milestone” in the country’s history. He also revealed that 15,000 people have … Read more
Various Scriptural passages indicate that Jesus, before his trial and execution, had hoped for a very different outcome of his sojourn on earth: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, … Read more
Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has been turned upside down in the name of an ecumenical council whose true interpretation continues to be debated more than half a century after it closed. One point of contention is the Council’s teaching on religious liberty. In his 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura, Pope Pius IX labeled as … Read more
It does not bode well for the rule of law when the standards for determining whether a statute is constitutional change from case to case. Justices Kennedy, Souter, and O’Connor of the US Supreme Court once wrote, “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.” (This line opened a plurality opinion in which they … Read more
Having spent more than a few years dealing with mental patients, nine of them as a chaplain to a large state mental hospital, I thought I was pretty well informed about the etiology of psychosis. When I had to deal with a distressed individual whose symptoms were unlike any I had ever encountered, I asked … Read more
Fans of traditional country music have a lot to complain about in the modern era of country music, but one of its biggest faults is the pervasive materialism seeping into the lyrics. Do the things that symbolize country living define the meaning of the music? Ask an outsider what country music is about and they … Read more
The left-leaning magazine The Nation has published a list of what it deems America’s all-time, most influential progressives. The list, which you can review for yourself, is very revealing. For starters, it’s fascinating that The Nation leads with Eugene Debs at number 1. Debs was a socialist. It was 100 years ago this year, in … Read more
$5,000. That’s all we need to raise each month to sustain and fully operate Crisis magazine. Jaws drop when I speak of how much Crisis accomplishes with so little. While our own self-imposed austerity measures allow us to run Crisis on a fraction of the budget of previous years’, as a non-profit publication operating without subscription … Read more