“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” That’s how divorce starts for the Catholic couples I talked to: hard-core, confession-going, Humanae Vitae-believing Catholic couples. Couples who know exactly what marriage is supposed to be. One man I spoke with, now divorced, took Scott Hahn’s Christian marriage class with his theology-major fiancée. Another couple, now divorced, … Read more
The scene outside the U.S. Supreme Court in the hours before the March for Life is rowdy and boisterous and occasionally tinged with violence, as pro-abortion counter-protesters in faux-bloodstained pants attempt to infiltrate the area reserved for the women and men of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign to give their testimonies about abortion regret. … Read more
Fr. Nick VanDenBroeke got into hot water recently for a homily he delivered on January 5, which is Immigration Sunday in his diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. In the homily, he called for restrictions on Muslim immigration, saying that “Islam is the greatest threat in the world both to Christianity and to America … … Read more
Something is stirring in England. It’s not much. A still, small voice of calm whispering in the dark. Prayers ascending like incense. A rekindled faith. No, it’s not much. Merely a mustard seed. It won’t be noticed by most people. It will go unheeded by the dead men milling around satanically in what remains of … Read more
The third Monday in February—latterly called “Presidents’ Day” because of Lincoln’s birthday on the 12th—is legally Washington’s birthday. Of course, his actual birthday is February 22, and I am old enough to remember getting off from school on that day, whenever it fell. But in 1971 Congress’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, banishing this … Read more
What do G.K. Chesterton, Joe Rogan, and Saint John Paul II have in common? G.K. Chesterton thought deeply about the world. He wrote on everything under the sun, sprinkling his interesting vocabulary and witty aphorisms throughout his works. Saint John Paul II was a formidable man, hardened by wars and sensitive to the major philosophical … Read more
To read or not to read? That is the question facing faithful Catholics as we emerge from yet another year of massive Church crisis and revelations of corruption now being reported by “establishment” Catholic media and “independent” Catholic media alike. Some Catholic pundits urge us to avoid entirely those Catholic media sources that were the … Read more
On a very chilly Sunday in October of 2018, I attended Mass at St. Hedwig’s in Holdingford with my wife. I’ll carry forever with me the image of the last moment when Fr. Gregory Mastey—with neither fanfare nor introduction—suddenly started reciting the Prayer to St. Michael. Fr. Gregory has ended Mass this way ever since, … Read more
I’m sure we’ve all heard by now about the death of Father Harkins, a young priest from Kansas City who committed suicide. The news deeply shook our Catholic community in St. Louis, particularly since Fr. Harkins had attended seminary here and was friends with priests in the area. There’s something shocking about a priest dying … Read more
The sordid life of Jeffrey Epstein serves to highlight the decadence of the deplorable epoch in which we find ourselves, as do the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. The web of vice and viciousness that he had spun was widespread, serving to entrap not only underage girls but also the rich and famous who preyed … Read more
Back in 2014, I wrote a book called Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity. I spoke not as an interpreter of Scripture or of the teachings of the Church. My arguments were based on observation, logic, history, anthropology, and culture. As far as I know, no Catholic on the left has taken them up. My … Read more
Etienne Gilson was one of the clearest thinking philosophers of the 20th century. As a good philosopher, naturally, he fully understood the importance of reason, a power that is often downgraded or even dismissed in the modern world. In an address he gave at Harvard’s Tercentenary Celebration (1936), he made the following statement: “Realism always … Read more
Modern Catholicism needs to re-examine its uneasy relationship with feminism, and there’s no better time than this year’s tragic anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As it turns out, January 22 follows hard on the heels of a new landmark—January 15—for Catholic feminists, namely, the Pope’s unprecedented appointment of a woman, Francesca Di Giovanni, to a … Read more
Recently the nonagenarian environmentalist, Sir David Attenborough, familiar to viewers of BBC America over many years for his nature shows, warned in bloodcurdling terms that it was almost too late to save the world from the horrors of the “climate crisis.” I remember as a child watching similar warnings during the early 1970s, of the … Read more
There is no arguing that we are facing a crisis of immense proportions in the Church. We most likely wince at the daily headlines of scandal, accusations, cover-ups, doublespeak, and unfaithfulness to vows, teaching, and immorality within the hierarchy of the Church—all of which leave her vulnerable and disreputable at exactly the time when the … Read more
This year’s theme for the March for Life, “Pro-Life is Pro-Woman,” is likely to resonate with the thousands of college students who will travel to Washington, D.C.—especially those from America’s most faithful Catholic colleges. For decades, radical pro-abortion feminism has dominated higher education. But at the colleges recommended in The Newman Guide for their strong … Read more
Editor’s note: this article first appeared in the March 1998 edition of Crisis Magazine. It seems a bit strange that a well-worn former government employee and sometime philosopher like myself should be asked to address this assemblage on matters of ethics and honor, right and wrong, on the question, “Does Honor Have a Future?” But as … Read more
The Catholic Church lost a great ally on January 12 when conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton died at the age of 75 from cancer. Scruton was not Catholic but Anglican—the author of Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England. Yet he was a friend of Rome, telling the Catholic Herald in 2015, … Read more
“Children are the future of the Church.” How often are such truisms used to explain the extensive focus on a single demographic group within a parish? From youth ministry to religious education to Catholic schools, most Catholic parishes direct a large amount of their limited resources toward young people. After all, if our children fall … Read more
It was Friday the 13th of December, and nothing unlucky had happened yet. Or so I thought, idly scrolling through the Catholic news—until my eyes landed on a startling headline from Crux. “Pope calls idea of declaring Mary co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’ ” ran the title of the piece. On closer inspection, it turned out that in his Spanish-language homily for … Read more