Several years ago, a group of pro-abortion demonstrators showed up at the March for Life here in Washington. While that itself is not uncommon, the display they brought was. In one corner of the Capitol Mall, they had erected a set of enormous, 20-foot-tall puppets. I can’t remember offhand what they had on display, though … Read more
For the past 15 years, the Church has experienced a surge of young members who have embraced orthodox Catholicism. This is simply undeniable. While solid numbers are hard to come by, anyone who runs in Catholic circles can verify the point anecdotally, and at least three books have recently been written on the subject. Furthermore, … Read more
It began in 1994 with The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God—a collection of essays by five Evangelical theologians. Now, eleven years later, Open Theism is a full-blown and highly controversial movement in Protestantism. Churches have split over the issue and professors of theology condemned for promoting it. Why … Read more
One of the few benefits of the literary train wreck titled The Da Vinci Code is that the book has motivated everyday Christians to investigate the early Church. Was Jesus really married? Was “pre-Catholic Christianity” actually a variant of ancient goddess-worshipping cults? What they find is something quite different from Dan Brown’s buffet of idiocies. … Read more
In the end, it was a beautiful death. Surrounded by those who knew and loved him, within earshot of the cheering thousands who came to be near his broken body, John Paul the Great passed into eternal life. With his prolonged suffering and dying, he offered a final homily—one that even the mainstream media could … Read more
I’m not sure which surprised me more—the article or where I’d found it. “Hail, Mary,” it said, emblazoned across a beautiful image of the Blessed Mother. And that on the cover of Time magazine. The piece, appearing in the March 21 issue, profiled a new and fascinating phenomenon: In increasing numbers, Protestants are discovering Mary. … Read more
Contrary to what many believe, The Passion of the Christ was not actor Jim Caviezel’s first appearance in the role of Jesus. That distinction goes to his part as Private Witt in 1998’s neglected masterpiece, The Thin Red Line. Loosely based on James Jones’s 1962 book of the same name, the film takes place in … Read more
I am sometimes asked how we at Crisis go about choosing the articles we run. More often than not, the question is a kind of accusation—a nicer way of saying, “You must have been out of your mind when you decided to print that.” Not surprisingly, in the past few months—with controversial articles on American … Read more
Antony Flew is no longer an atheist, and that’s no small thing. For over half a century, the English philosophy professor had been the elder statesman of intellectual atheism. In 1950, he published what would become a famous essay, “Theology and Falsification,” wherein he argued that the concept of God is meaningless insofar as it … Read more
Election 2004 is done and the  pundits have picked it over well. But one fact can stand a little repetition: This election, more so than any in recent memory, has demonstrated the power of the Catholic vote. It had become fashionable in the months leading up to November—even among some Catholic conservatives—to deny that there … Read more
It has now been two months since we unveiled the new look for Crisis. In that time, I’ve received a lot of constructive feedback. The vast majority of it has been positive—that the magazine is far more readable, the color attractive, and the new design eye-catching. Of course, no change comes without some criticism. That’s … Read more
The boy in the center of the picture bothers me most. No older than ten, he sits with hands behind his head, staring in wide- eyed terror off the edge of the frame. To his left, an adult woman—one of the teachers, perhaps—looks nervously at the cameraman. And to the right of the boy stands … Read more
Bjorn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. In 1998, he published four articles offering a statistician’s look at the environment in the leading Danish newspaper. His findings initiated a massive debate throughout the European environmentalist community. He later expanded his articles into … Read more
No writer wants to read criticism of his work—whether well-founded or not. After laboring on a project for months or years, he begins to identify himself with his work. An attack on one is an attack on the other. And so, predictably, Michael Rose took issue with my September 2002 story, “A Question of Integrity: … Read more
It’s a sickening story. In one section of Goodbye, Good Men (pp. 73-78 of the Regnery Press edition), author Michael S. Rose pulls the curtain back on the moral corruption at the American College of Louvain, a U.S.-run seminary associated with the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Here’s the gist of it: In 1999, … Read more
It’s hard to watch Francis Bok remember. He speaks softly, haltingly. His piercing eyes stare out, sometimes at you, sometimes into space, but always to that day 15 years ago in Sudan. He was seven years old and living with his family in a small southern village. His mother had sent him to the local … Read more