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  • Crisis Magazine: The First Issue

    In November of 1982 Michael Novak and Ralph McInerny founded Catholicism in Crisis: A Journal of Lay Catholic Opinion, which quickly became one of the leading voices—often the only voice—in support of Catholic laymen and their essential role in the marketplace, the public square, and the domestic realm. Below are all the articles that appeared in the very first issue of Crisis (also available in PDF form here).

    Today, Crisis Magazine stands renewed. Each day, Crisis will remind countless Catholics of their heritage, give them the confidence to defend the common good, a just society, the teachings the Church, the family, the dignity of work and the sanctity of life.

    For more on the renewal of Crisis Magazine, you may read Crisis Publisher William Fahey’s Trigesimo Anno: Continuing Crisis and Crisis Editor John Zmirak’s Picking up the Broadsword.

    Catholicism in Crisis cover - November, 1982

    The Present Crisis

    by Crisis Magazine

    THOSE OF US who planned this new journal did so under the working title Catholicism in Crisis. We did so with the example of Reinhold Niebuhr vividly in mind, who on February 10, 1941, under analogous circumstances, finding existing periodicals inhospitable, launched Christianity and…

    November 1, 1982

    Distinguo

    by Ralph McInerny

    ALTHOUGH THE FATHERS of Vatican II, particularly in the Constitution on the Laity, spoke of an enlarged role for lay people in the areas where they have special competence, the post-conciliar scene has involved an odd crisscrossing. Not a few clergy have moved into…

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    November 1, 1982

    Making Deterrence Work

    by Michael Novak

    THE EFFORT BY the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to go into stragtegic specifics on questions of nuclear war may have consequences are different from those the bishops intend. It is not always those who cry “Peace, peace!” who actually bring peace. The opposite…

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    November 1, 1982

    The Pope, The Press, and Nuclear Deterrence

    by Phyllis Zagano

    IT IS SAID that Pope John Paul II once declared that if St. Paul were around today, he’d be on NBC. We might add, if he was lucky. The tremendous confusion regarding the position of the Holy See on nuclear weapons is no…

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    November 1, 1982

    Let Priests Be Priests!

    by Jude Dougherty

    DIOCESAN NEWSPAPERS call attention to seminary closings. Sociologists predict a critical shortage of priests by the turn of the century. Is the remedy the ordination of lay deacons, the commissioning of additional Euchanstic ministers? Why the scarcity of vocations? Are fewer capable of the life…

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    November 1, 1982

    Theological Politics

    by Robert Spaeth

    WHEN CLERGYYMEN and other professional religious people move into the vigorous debates of American politics — as, in fact, they are doing more and more — they bring with them the concepts and terminology of theology. To the religious-minded this transference might appear unobjectionable, but…

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    November 1, 1982

    Catholics and the Moral Majority

    by Mary Hanna

    THE MORAL MAJORITY campaigned vigorously during the 1980 elections for conservative candidates and conservative positions on social issues, rousing vehement denunciations from some and outraged protest from politicians it helped defeat. (“They did a very thorough job of beating my brains out with Christian…

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    November 1, 1982

    Catholics and the Peace Movement

    by James Finn

    ABOUT CATHOLICS and the Peace movement there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Catholics are a noticeable presence in the Peace Movement. They are no longer on the fringe or regarded as ininpical and exotic converts to the cause….

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    November 1, 1982

    The Bishops’ Role

    by George Weigel

    THE DEBATE around the Catholic Bishops’ forthcoming pastoral letter on war and peace has tended to focus either on questions of normative moral theology (e.g. if the bishops reject deterrence in the absolute but “tolerate” it in the present, is the door open to…

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    November 1, 1982

    The Roar of the Canons

    by Christopher Wolfe

    TTHE UPCOMING REVISION of canon law includes a number of controversial canons on education. American Catholic educators have been especially critical of Canon 767: “In every kind of institution in higher studies those who teach theological disciplines should have a mandate from the competent theological…

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