I’ve always loved this funny little tune from Chaucer’s day called “Sumer is icumen in.” Joyful and ebullient, it was doubtless sung by many an English peasant out sweating in the field and is full of the solid earthy, good humor of a people who were closely bound to the land. For them, one of … Read more
The Grand Inquisitor John Zmirak, illustrated by Carla Millar, Crossroad, $19.95, 76 pages A graphic novel is a comic book on steroids: It’s bigger, fiercer, and capable of heavy lifting. What could be a heavier topic than a conspiracy to destroy Christ’s Church from within? That’s the theme of John Zmirak’s latest, The Grand Inquisitor. … Read more
A very tangled situation arises in one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, Measure for Measure. This is to say nothing particularly arresting; after all, what do we come upon in any of his plays but tangled situations? We all know the agonies and cross-currents in Hamlet and Macbeth, of course. (To my own mind, King Lear … Read more
An atheist who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jack Chick theorizes on What Rome Is Up To when a couple of Catholic sources remark that the discovery of life on other planets poses no particular threat to the Catholic Faith. This piece is a classic example of how sin makes you stupid. Our Bright knows … Read more
Alan Moore — pagan, anarchist, wildly bearded author of V for Vendetta and the terrific superhero-deconstruction comic Watchmen — is not the person one might expect to write a poignant story of homecoming, conscience, repentance, and renewal. Then again, he is just the sort of person to write a horror comic about an advertising designer … Read more
For those who may have missed it, P. Z. Myers, a washed-up academic at a third-tier school who takes out his bitterness on Christians and calls it "science blogging," claimed that some human toothache named Webster Cook had received death threats for stealing a Eucharist and threatening to desecrate it. Reader John Farrell repeatedly tried … Read more
Somebody (I’ll say Chesterton, just to start another meme falsely attributing great quotes to him) once remarked that "the man who declares ‘The modern intellect can no longer accept the primitive doctrines of the Resurrection of the Dead, Transubstantiation, and a Trinitarian Godhead’ typically means ‘I’m sleeping with my neighbor’s wife.’" These days, … Read more
My niece’s husband is a trainee Baptist pastor. Jimbo’s hip, friendly, and fun to be with. He’s smart and theologically savvy. I like him. He loves Jesus and believes the Bible, and on most moral and doctrinal issues I can affirm what he affirms. We agree on a lot. But even when we agree, we … Read more
One recent evening just days before Easter found me sitting on the hardwood of our living room floor. My son had turned three, and this had been a long day of special breakfasts, paper-wrapped surprises, remote-control cars, and a Cookie Monster birthday cake. But now, as bedtime approached, I was sitting for a moment, watching … Read more
Recently, the Mainstream Media (MSM) got itself all in a tizzy about "the Vatican" supposedly issuing "seven new deadly sins." As one particularly egregious headline put it, "Recycle or go to hell, warns Vatican." Given this view of the Faith, discussions in the press then break down into inane prattle about mortal and … Read more
Last week, media agencies around the world took an interview with Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti to mean that the Vatican had revised the seven classic deadly sins and added seven new deadly sins to the list. In particular, they focused on “pollution” as one of the new sins that the archbishop was apparently promulgating for the … Read more
My thoughts today may have particular import during Lent, but they touch on a subject that is much more far-reaching. Indeed, it is a topic that ought to be inscribed along the horizon of one’s imagination in some permanent form, if one is at all serious about his mortal (and, let’s face it, his eternal) … Read more
If David lived today, I have a feeling not a few modern-day Perfecti in the blogosphere would respond to Psalm 51 with something like the following . . . If David lived today, I have a feeling not a few modern-day Perfecti in the blogosphere would respond to Psalm 51 with something like the … Read more
In his autobiography, G. K. Chesterton writes, “A large section of the Intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of Intelligence.” At first, this surprising indictment might be interpreted as merely humorous; after all, are not “intellectuals” those to whom we turn for enlightenment and guidance, those who are the luminaries of universities — castles of knowledge and … Read more
Most of us modern Christians congratulate ourselves that we’re tolerant and not judgmental. All that Old Testament brimstone is old hat. We’ve advanced and evolved. We’re more forgiving than our ancestors. But then a story like this catches our eye: Shouting, "This is YouTube material!" a 27-year-old British man urinated on a dying … Read more
“Come sit over here,” my wife whispered to me. “Let’s give Dad a chance to be alone with her.” It was a quiet room in a hospice, the only sounds the muffled pumping of oxygen, and the softer and slower breathing of my mother-in-law, Esther, as she lay a few hours before her death. Her … Read more
C. S. Lewis once remarked that he was a converted pagan living among apostate Puritans. Our culture is, if anything, even more redolent of curdled apostate Calvinism than it was in Lewis’s day, and that fact can be seen everywhere. On a whimsical note, it is discovered in an NPR broadcast I heard a few … Read more
The front page of the October 7 edition of the Sunday New York Times featured an article that described how certain Protestant denominations have been using Microsoft’s rapaciously popular video game Halo 3 to lure youths to church. They promise the avid youngster large screen televisions and multiple control options so he and his friends … Read more
It is an old truism that there is Tradition and there are traditions. Catholic apologist types typically illustrate this by showing clear examples of Big-T Tradition (the Creed, or the canon of Scripture) vs. small-t traditions such as, say, birthday cakes, Thanksgiving turkeys, or Super Bowl beer. All of these are human traditions, and none … Read more
My wife recently gave me the boxed DVD set of the British television series Brideshead Revisited. No doubt most readers of crisis will have long since read Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece and seen the filmed version. The great Catholic fiction writers of the 20th century were not particularly happy to be thought of as “Catholic novelists”—that … Read more