Post-Sanity America
What do you do when you live in a culture where, to an alarming degree, the institutions are run by lunatics—madmen and women who can wield power over you, no matter how much you try to evade them?
The Value of Speaking in Parables
What is the point of trying to reason with people for whom reason has no purchase? So, I speak in parables.
Don’t Talk to Your Children
It’s hard to be a kid these days. Your blue-haired teachers appear on Libs of Tik-Tok videos bragging about selling you into sex slavery, and people go “Ho-hum. How cute. Don’t judge.” If you’re a girl, the federal government and institutions like Boston Children’s Hospital will promote “gender affirming hysterectomies.” And, of course, also on … Read more
The Fight for Our Lives
Imagine an NBA basketball court emblazoned with the slogan “Unborn Lives Matter.” Imagine the NFL sponsoring “Our First Freedom Month,” celebrating religious liberty (or even just imagine players standing for the national anthem). Imagine state legislatures restoring all the statues and monuments vandalized in 2020—including statues of Christopher Columbus, who was easily the most frequently … Read more
Fiction and the Right Side of History
John Maynard Keynes famously noted that “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.” That’s putting it mildly. My experience is that of Peter Hitchens: I am ceaselessly amazed, as I look at our media, political parties, schools and universities, how formerly conservative people … Read more
More than a Book for Boys
Fr. George Rutler of Crisis has a pithy way of saying it: “The three greatest blessings to mankind are Christianity, Penicillin, and the British Empire.” For teenage boys, who should already be well drilled in the tenets of Christianity, and might already have imbibed penicillin to deal with the odd ear infection or two, … Read more
What’s So Great About Catholicism?
With its divine foundation, sanction, and mission, nothing could be more glorious than the Catholic Church. But, of course, many people — even many baptized Catholics — don’t see it that way. Yet when the sins of men — secular material progress, or our own self-centeredness — blind us to this, they blind us to everything. The Renaissance, a … Read more
What Might Have Been
When asked my politics, I sometimes say, “Papal Insurrectionist.” In the classic Catholic novel Dawn of All, by Robert Hugh Benson, I get my wish. Here is a future wherein the world (or at least Europe and the Americas and increasing parts of Asia and elsewhere) has come to be “really and intelligently Christian.” And … Read more
Five Myths about Christianity, Islam, and the Middle Ages
Does Islam need a Reformation? Not unless you think it would benefit from additional dollops of Puritanism; further encouragement to smash altars, stained glass, and other forms of “idolatry”; prodding to ban riotous celebrations like Christmas and Easter; and support for fundamentalist Islamic schools that insist on sola Korana and sola Sunnah. Indeed, it would … Read more
Making Babies: A Very Different Look at Natural Family Planning
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
What’s So Great about Catholicism?
In this classic and controversial Crisis Magazine article, H.W. Crocker III lists ten things Catholics should be proud of. Do you agree? With its divine foundation, sanction, and mission, nothing could be more glorious than the Catholic Church. But, of course, many people — even many baptized Catholics — don’t see it that way. … Read more
Why Jefferson Davis Opposed Roe v. Wade
Okay, he didn’t, really, because he never had the chance — but it’s as certain as magnolia blooms in the spring that if Jefferson Davis were to rise again and take his place as the extremely senior senator from Mississippi, he would make the Senate ring with his denunciations of Roe v. Wade. In fact, … Read more
Lepanto, 1571: The Battle that Saved Europe
The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but … Read more
Lepanto, 1571: The Battle That Saved Europe
The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but … Read more
Monasteries and Madrassas: Five Myths About Christianity, Islam, and the Middle Ages
Does Islam need a Reformation? Not unless you think it would benefit from additional dollops of Puritanism; further encouragement to smash altars, stained glass, and other forms of “idolatry”; prodding to ban riotous celebrations like Christmas and Easter; and support for fundamentalist Islamic schools that insist on sola Korana and sola Sunnah. Indeed, it would … Read more
Making Babies: A Very Different Look at Natural Family Planning
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. So let me propose … Read more
The Case for an American Empire
Every Catholic should by rights be an imperialist. As Rev. Robert Hugh Benson once wrote, “There were, after all, only two logical theories of government: the one, that power came from below, the other, that power came from above. The infidel, the Socialist, the materialist, the democrat, these maintained the one; the Catholic, the Monarchist, … Read more
Guest Column: What Might Have Been
When asked my politics, I sometimes say, “Papal Insurrectionist.” In the classic Catholic novel, Dawn of All, by Robert Hugh Benson, I get my wish. Here is a future wherein the world (or at least Europe and the Americas and increasing parts of Asia and elsewhere) has come to be “really and intelligently Christian.” And … Read more
Reading for CIA Agents
“Petrie, I have traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race….” So begins The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. For “white race,” these days we might say “the West,” but the mission of Burmese commissioner Nayland Smith, hero of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu novels, … Read more
What’s So Great About Catholicism?
With its divine foundation, sanction, and mission, nothing could be more glorious than the Catholic Church. But, of course, many people—even many baptized Catholics—don’t see it that way. Yet when the sins of men—or secular material progress, or our own self-centeredness—blind us to this, they blind us to everything. The Renaissance, a great Catholic moment, … Read more