Years ago when our children were young we had a summer cabin on a lake in the mountains of upstate New York. Every now and then, an idyllic summer day would be interrupted by a violent storm. Typically the storm was preannounced by the sudden appearance of dark clouds that gave way to torrents of … Read more
Last week something very strange happened. I made a comment that stopped my girlfriend from talking. Much of the time, I can’t get a word in edgewise — not that I mind, since she’s wry, whip-smart, and deliriously Southern. But this time, she got really quiet and sounded for once impressed. She said, in a … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Tom Hoopes reports on the link between abortion and breast cancer, and explains why mainstream medicine is ignoring the facts. Â Â Janet Gail was used to looking at mammograms and finding bad news. As a hospital technician in Pennsylvania, that was her job. But she was unprepared for what … Read more
The Beatitude before this one pronounces a blessing on those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Taken in isolation, it would be easy to read that Beatitude as a sort of general, “Rah, rah for the underdog” sentiment. But coupled with this saying, it takes on a very different sense; for this Beatitude is a … Read more
At a nephew’s recently, I looked in his shelves for something to read and came across a handsome edition of Huckleberry Finn. I had not read this book in ages, so I began to look at it again. It is pretty hard to put down. Early in the book, the Widow Douglas reads to Huck … Read more
What happens when you concede, without a fight, to the spirit of the age? As riven with strife as the Catholic Church in America has been, I think it is instructive to take a look at a place where there is no strife, because there was no battle. I’m speaking of our good neighbor to … Read more
Natural family planning (NFP) needs a slogan, because as a “product” — if I might adopt business-speak — it’s not selling too well. According to some surveys, about 90 percent of professed Catholics reject the Church’s teaching on birth control. Even among priests, fewer than one in three considers artificial contraception to be “always” sinful. … Read more
The historian Christopher Dawson acknowledged in a 1951 essay the difficulty in explaining the Christian view of history. For Christians, God’s actual involvement in historical time through a particular Person and place is a theological principle around which secular history occurs. For people listening to the Christian message for the first Mother of God: A … Read more
A friend who returned from a visit to France last week was enlivened by his experience of the new ecclesial communities there. He met members of the Community of the Beatitudes — a mixed community of men and women, married and celibate, who live a life with apostolic work and evangelization, Carmelite spirituality, and beautiful … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker says we have an obligation not to be unnecessarily distracting to others at Mass. Â Â As I have not received nearly enough hate mail of late, I thought it best to write something else on modesty, this time modesty at Mass (see my first article, “Drawing a … Read more
The prospects for conservatism as a political force in the United States are arguably grim. The GOP’s electoral prospects may be on the verge of drying up due to demographic shifts, particularly the growth of the Hispanic vote — the kind of shifts that, in the past, have driven major political parties into extinction. There … Read more
I remember when I was in the fourth grade a rerun of The Twilight Zone was interrupted by a news bulletin announcing that somebody named “Martin Luther King Jr.” had been shot. I had not the foggiest idea who that might be, but I could tell from my mom’s worried face that he must be … Read more
The pope’s new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (CV), is a “big” document, and I won’t pretend to dispose of it with a brief commentary. Like its ancestor, the epochal Rerum Novarum, it will work its way through the mills of hundreds of thinkers for decades to come — provoking responses by writers of every political … Read more
Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical — Caritas in Veritate — arrived today containing 30,468 words: an introduction, six chapters, conclusion, and 159 footnotes. It’s not thrilling reading, even by encyclical standards, but as the latest papal statement on the Church’s social teaching, “Love in Truth” will be a work of lasting significance. Those who dig … Read more
The melancholy truth of the matter is that history has now taken us all quite beyond the tranquil days of fountain pen and writing paper and quiet hours at one’s desk. One has to have that gray machine, with all of its ancillary machines, dominating one’s study. I have managed to limit things to a … Read more
The confirmation of nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice is almost a certainty. She’s a woman, a Hispanic, and the pick of a popular president who leads the party that controls the Senate. Democratic leadership in the Senate is determined to complete hearings before the Judiciary Committee and get a confirmation vote before … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Anthony Esolen says a forgotten tourist attraction in rural Pennsylvania can teach us much about the nation we once were, and what we have become. Â Â Â On a dead-end stretch of what was once U.S. Route 22, in a small village with tacky-friendly billboards boasting “Genuine Dutch Cooking,” … Read more
In the beginning of our marriage, God saw fit to give us babies by the bucketful. Or so it seemed. As much as I reveled in those early years of motherhood, having four kids under five, then five kids under six, then six kids under seven, and so on, did take its toll on me. I … Read more
Yesterday, President Obama held a 45-minute meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House with some members of the Catholic press. According to the Catholic News Service, those present included writers from National Catholic Reporter, America, Commonweal, Catholic Digest, Vatican Radio,as well as a (non-Catholic)religion writer from the Washington Post. Rev. Owen Kearns was … Read more
Is Natural Family Planning a misogynous burden on women… or is it actually liberating? Marjorie Campbell and Kate Wicker discuss the question. We present a point/counterpoint on the question, “Is Natural Family Planning Misogynous?” Marjorie Campbell takes the affirmative while Kate Wicker argues the negative. Please feel free to continue the discussion in the Comments … Read more