If you believe that…

1. The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ not only to serve as the ark of salvation, but also to transform the world;

2. All human rights flow out of the fundamental right of every human being to his or her own life, and that it’s the moral obligation of all people, nations, and economies to protect life;

3. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching — the universal destination of goods, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good — are best achieved through democratic capitalism;

4. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching are morally right, positively beneficial, and encourage the pursuit of business and economic success;

5. It’s the role of the family and intermediate institutions — churches, charities, local communities, and social organizations — and not the state, to create culture and teach morality; and

6. What is good in our culture, including popular culture, should be both encouraged and enjoyed, whether its origin is secular or religious,

…then you’ll love the return of Crisis Magazine.

Crisis Magazine examines politics, business, culture, faith, and family life from a Catholic perspective. But unlike other media outlets that specialize in one subject or the other, we cover all, since together they make up a full human life. Catholicism is a worldview, not just a religion, and its individual elements cannot be understood in isolation from the larger whole. We present the faith in all its lived facets.

At the same time, with the return of Crisis, we’re turning our focus to business and sound economics, and what Catholic Social Teaching has to offer both.

That’s an important subject right now. With the economy in decline, the Left is taking the opportunity to blame the free market for our problems, and advocates the very same interventionist government policies that got us into this trouble in the first place.

Unfortunately, even well-meaning Catholics are joining in. It’s getting to the point where pro-business Catholics are treated like dissenters — as if there’s a contradiction between Catholicism and business success.

With the new Crisis Magazine, we’ll not only defend the role of business in the Church and society, but will actively promote it as a positive vocation for the faithful, in line with Catholic Social Teaching. The fact is, successful businessmen have a moral obligation to both create wealth and to use their non-essential wealth for the common good. That’s why capitalism is the most effective poverty-destroying program in human history.

What’s more, Catholic Social Teaching can also guide us in public policy. Is subsidiarity compatible with the Welfare State? Where does solidarity fit into the immigration debate? Does the universal destination of goods mean we should all be collectivists? Can a free market help provide for the common good?

We’ll be exploring those and related questions.

Of course, by expanding our focus to business and economics, we won’t abandon our ongoing coverage of politics, culture, and the Church. We’ll continue to stand up for faithful Catholicism in every aspect. It’s all part of our three-fold mission:

1. To equip Catholics with the life- and culture-renewing wisdom of our ancient faith.

2. To engage and evangelize non-Catholics of goodwill.

3. To defend the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

And just as we’ve updated and expanded our organizational mission, we’re also making a significant technological adjustment as well…

The New ‘Print’

In 2007, we came to the conclusion that the print industry was dying. Printing and postage costs were climbing, yet fewer people each year wanted to subscribe to print publications or buy paper-and-ink books. We realized that if we wanted to continue the mission of Crisis Magazine, we needed to do it online.

While the website has dramatically increased our readership, it isn’t an ideal successor to the magazine — it’s more of a transitional rest stop than a final destination.

Website readership habits tend to favor short, punchy columns or blog posts, generally under 1,000 words. People don’t like sitting at their computers to read the lengthy, multi-page articles we used to carry at Crisis. While that’s understandable, it makes it impossible to run the kinds of long-form articles that were so central to the magazine.

We’re not alone in seeing the limitations of the World Wide Web. The September 2010 issue of Wired had a cover story proclaiming, “The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet.” It’s an eye-opening piece, and it makes the important distinction between the Web and the Internet. The Web is what you use when you start up Internet Explorer or FireFox and surf to a specific site; it requires a browser to navigate. The Internet, on the other hand, is simply the entire online network (the thing that houses the Web). When you check your mail with a Blackberry, download a book through a Kindle, or look at the Weather Channel’s forecast on an iPhone, you’re accessing the Internet, but not the Web. Never at any point are you using a browser: Your mail app, book download, and weather app are self-enclosed programs that use the Internet to get the info you’re looking for, but they don’t involve surfing websites.

This is significant, because it points us away from our website rest stop and toward our real final destination — the new form of print. With the advent of e-readers (like the Kindle and Nook) and tablet computers (like the iPad), we’re able to combine the portability and reading experience of old print while adding the flexibility, interactive quality, and sheer power of the Internet.

In a sense, the new Crisis Magazine represents a return to print — but the next generation of print. Up until this point, technology really didn’t allow for a virtual magazine/book replacement. It does now.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the website is going anywhere. We’ll continue to build that up, both for our faithful Web readers and also to power our mobile apps. But it’s clear that mobile device technology is the future of publishing. At some point over the next 12 to 24 months, the reading world will arrive at a paradigm shift where more people will be reading material on their mobile devices than on their computer monitors. Just two weeks ago, Amazon announced that it now sells more e-books than paperbacks. It’s no exaggeration to say we’re entering a new era in publishing.

With that in mind, we’ll be creating a series of apps for mobile devices, starting with one for the iPad. That’s an exploding technology — Apple sold 15 million iPads in 2010 and is projected to move another 40 to 50 million this year. Within a few years, most Americans will have a tablet device of some kind, whether an iPad, an Android tablet, or something else. We think they’ll replace most books and newspapers and will turn into omnipresent lifestyle devices.

Just as we followed our readers from print to the Web, now we do so from the Web to the new print. In a way, we’re resurrecting the original magazine… but with capabilities that we never had available at Crisis.

Of course, all of this costs money.

We don’t ask for your financial support very often. In fact, it has been almost a year since we last did so. But we need your help now.

With the economy in the doldrums, non-profit fundraising has been very difficult. There are so many good organizations and a limited amount of money to go around. But we believe that the mission and scope of Crisis Magazine is unique, and that we provide a much-needed voice in this era of massive government, rampant immorality, creeping socialism, and anti-religious secularism.

Will you stand with us as we begin this new, vital mission? Will you help us defend the Church, the family, and free enterprise?

Please click one of the buttons below to make a donation. You can make a one-time gift, an automatic monthly gift, or send a donation through your PayPal account.

We’re deeply grateful for any support you can send us at this critical time. And, if you would, please consider the monthly recurring gift – even if it’s just $15 a month. While that may seem like a small amount, when added to the gifts of our other friends and supporters, it goes a long way.

Whether it’s $500… or $250… or $75… or $35, we need your help. Can we count on your support?

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