The feminist challenge to the Catholic faith is based upon a deep misunderstanding. Feminists accuse Catholicism of being thoroughly patriarchal. They claim that women have been oppressed since the Church’s inception by a male power structure. In the Catholic Church, they charge, men and men alone are the rulers in a hierarchically-based system of pope, … Read more
 Our family has finally called it quits. We’ve folded our tents and abandoned the strip mall and peep show known as American television. We still have the machine in the living room, whereon we can watch Going My Way, with Bing Crosby as the “progressive” Father O’Malley, back when progressive meant that he took … Read more
In 1993 I was paid a visit in my home in London by an Irish writer, Colm Toibin, who was gathering material for a book on Catholicism in Europe. Toibin himself had lost his faith and seemed surprised when I told him that I believed not just in God but also in such difficult notions … Read more
Each month, when I face an auditorium full of engaged couples preparing for a Catholic marriage, there is a Q-and-A session. It is the interesting, unrehearsed part of the evening. The couples write their queries on a piece of paper, and the anonymity guarantees at least a few hardball questions about the Church and its … Read more
You are in a large church basement on the upper east side of Manhattan. Like all church basements, it freelances as a basketball court, a dining hall, a wailing room for various twelve-step programs. This morning, it’s marriage preparation. Seventy-five couples who plan to marry in the Catholic Church are here for a day of … Read more
On July 29, 1997, a representative philosophe of our abortion culture, retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, was lavishly eulogized in St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where the Requiem Mass for President Kennedy had been sung in 1963. Richard Cardinal Cushing was relatively constrained back then, because liturgical depredations had not yet switched into … Read more
So glorious, so mysterious, the Holy Grail symbolizes an elusive object of desire. Although now usually identified as the chalice of the Last Supper sought by Arthurian heroes, the Grail has been pictured as a dish, a ciborium, and even a white stone. Indeed, for a long time, its name had a rather mundane … Read more
The best religious films, and therefore the best Catholic films, convey the great truths of Christianity implicitly rather than explicitly, not unlike the mystery of incarnation itself, in which the Word became flesh in the person of an obscure carpenter from a hick town in a minor province. In addition, this list consists … Read more
Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song. Joseph de Maistre We live in an age of confusion. It might even be said that we major not only in intellectual confusions but in affective confusions as well. Many do not know how to gauge their emotions; they cannot distinguish between valid and invalid … 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
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Ted Gioia says it’s time for some new and improved profanity. He has some ideas… Some years ago, during the seventh inning of a baseball game, umpire John Hirschbeck got carried away in a dispute with pitcher Hideki Irabu, the temperamental but promising New York “Yankee” from Japan. … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Deal W. Hudson says his journey to the Catholic Church proceeded book by book. Reading, said Josemaría Escrivá, has made many a saint. In my own case it has merely made a convert, but I do continue to read ever more deeply into the mystery that is the … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Edward T. Oakes, S.J. looks at the troubling tendency of theologians to abandon the historic faith. In 1968, a professor of theology at the University of Regensburg wrote a modestly sized treatise on the Apostles’ Creed called Introduction to Christianity. Its impact, however, was anything but modest, for … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Anthony Esolen takes a discouraged but entertaining look at the lectionary. “If any man,” says the preacher, “can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.” At that the door is flung open, … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Thomas Howard sketches the life and work of Dietrich von Hildebrand — often considered a 20th century Doctor of the Church.  The name Dietrich von Hildebrand is not, perhaps, as well known as it should be among intelligent and literate Catholics — or, for that matter, among Christians of … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, James Hitchcock says that while the Second Vatican Council was itself orthodox, much of what followed was not. Here’s why. Â Â Most Catholics in 1959 probably didn’t even know what an ecumenical council was. And yet, here it was. Pope John XXIII announced that the goals of the Second … 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
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
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
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
