This has been a tough month for Catholics. I’m keenly aware of the time, because I have been straining at the leash wanting to write about the Legionaries of Christ. In lieu of articles, I’ve subjected my friends on the phone to fully formed paragraphs of commentary till they cried uncle — and devoured … Read more
Literature offers us a rich panorama of marriages in which the woman is a shrew and the husband a victim. Not every male is a Petruchio and can “tame” his conjoint. But while not a marriage, the mysterious partnership between the great C. S. Lewis and Janie King Moore, which lasted half of Lewis’s life, … Read more
"Exodus" is the Greek name for the second book of the Bible. In Hebrew, it is called the Book of Names. That’s because, like Catholic encyclicals, the Hebrew books of the Bible are titled by the opening words of the book: "These are the names . . . ." It is fitting that … Read more
I had just boarded the late afternoon train from Paddington Station headed west to Bristol. Commuters were jostling for places, bags were being stashed, and those of us who managed to find seats were settling down with a book or a sandwich for the journey, when suddenly a voice came over the intercom. It was … Read more
This week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will meet with Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican. With the debilitating illness of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Pelosi has become the de facto leader of dissident Catholic members of Congress. It’s only appropriate that Pelosi should take Kennedy’s place. When she became Speaker in January … Read more
“The lunatic is on the grass.” It was an hour before midnight. Ten-year-old James was in his bedroom, alone, when he was suddenly gripped by terror. A Pink Floyd song rang out through the empty room. The radio turned on by itself. “The lunatic is on the grass. The lunatic is in the … Read more
In the space of less than six weeks, from mid-December to late January, four men died who played crucial roles in the shaping of American Catholicism as it stands today. The four were Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., the leading American Catholic theologian of the postconciliar era, who died December 12 at the age of 90; … Read more
On February 12, 1809, both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born, a rather interesting coincidence. There are other odd concurrences in their two lives: Both of their mothers died quite early, within a year of each other — Charles’s mother, Susanna, in 1817 and Abraham’s mother, Nancy, in 1818. Both lost three children. … Read more
Deal Hudson spoke with fundraising guru Chuck Piola about what Catholic non-profit organizations can do to survive the current economic crisis. Chuck Piola has been called “The King of Cold Calls” by Inc.Magazine. In 1986, he and his business partner formed NCO Financial Systems. Over twelve years, NCO grew from sixty clients to 80,000; $70,000 … Read more
This is Dr. Joseph Wright’s response to specific criticisms of his work on the study, "Reducing Abortion in America: The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors." We received this via E-mail, and have been unable to find it posted elsewhere, so we have uploaded it here. ♦ ♦ ♦ Each year over a million unborn children … Read more
“Cree-yate in meeeeee a cleeeen heart, Oh Gahhhhhd!” That’s the responsorial my parish sang every Sunday of Lent, until the events of Holy Week moved us to Passion. No “Let my tongue be silenced if I ever forget you!” for us. Too drastic a proposition for our music minister, I guess. Whether it suited the … Read more
 The tricky thing about the Ten Commandments is figuring out how to break them up. The original Hebrew text refers to them as (pedantry alert!) the “Ten Words” but doesn’t do all that tidy stuff with the tablets and the Roman numerals clearly delineating where one commandment leaves off and another starts. As a … Read more
After his Vigil Mass, the body of Msgr. William B. Smith was carried out the main doors of St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, for the last time, and I wondered how many thousands of entrances and exits he had made through those same doors since he had first arrived as a seminarian. It was not … Read more
It may seem strange to assert that Catholics have forgotten how to pray. Surely we still beseech the Lord in times of distress. We attend Mass, we say the rosary. More than that, simply because we are human, by the grace of God the Spirit works within us, with unutterable groans and longings. We pray … Read more
A few years ago I wrote a book that was very pessimistic about the future of the Church in the United States. American Catholicism is a religion, I argued, in a state of probably irreversible decline. It is on the road, not to total disappearance exactly, but to a reduced state in which it will … Read more
 Recently I’ve begun to notice a resemblance between Scranton’s Bishop Joseph Francis Martino and another Philadelphia-born bishop, John Cardinal O’Connor. Bishop Martino is outspoken, and his direct, almost pugnacious, criticism is reminiscent of the late cardinal of New York.  Both Martino and O’Connor attended St. Charles Borromeo Seminary before seeking graduate degrees — … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, historian T. David Curp takes an honest look at the Church’s record on slavery, and explains why it isn’t all good. Current questions and values can so distort our study of the past that we enact our own version of the "cadaver synod." In this infamous trial, held … Read more
A few years ago, my son Ambrose was hospitalized with a lung infection. The two weeks he spent away from home were trying times for our family, but I have one particularly fond memory of his stay. One day, when I returned to his hospital room after being away for a few hours, he made … Read more
The Catholic Church in the English-speaking world has a serious problem, and it is becoming ever more apparent in the digital age: It maintains a copyright on its ritual texts and charges royalties for printing and distributing them, while admitting only narrow exceptions. The Catholic Church is alone among major denominations in using this pay-to-pray … Read more
No one is ever really ready for the death of a loved one, whether it’s an aging parent or a sibling whose life is cut short prematurely. This reality was brought home to me when two of my aunts (Fredrena and Loupenn), my mother’s sisters, both died within a few months of each other. While … Read more