The sight of our Southern Baptist president receiving the Eucharist in South Africa touched off some foment for a few days this spring, but then, like most indiscretions nowadays not involving lurid sex, was quickly for-gotten. Clinton’s communion is part of a larger trend, manifested in various ways, toward increasing disrespect for the sacramental heart … Read more
If you were a classroom teacher during the ’70s and ’80s, like I was, you probably noticed how students were adopting talk-show manners. Intensity of feeling, not logical inference, was treated as the surest criterion of truth. To protect these privileged feelings, the font of wisdom, self-esteem became the purpose of pedagogy. Such silliness could … Read more
I never thought I would be part of a cheering, waving crowd. After all, I was too old, too sophisticated. Then John Paul II walked out on the stage. It was his Wednesday public audience, and together with my family and six friends I sat only a few rows from the stage of an enormous … Read more
I had just ventured into the Caribbean with ninety Crisis readers when the Clinton sex scandal hit the headlines. Even at a far distance, it was clear that the story was steering the media discussion into vulgar waters. I hoped my nine year old daughter would avoid hearing about Oval Office assignations, stained dresses, and … Read more
What Follows in these pages is an ecumenical initiative of Crisis magazine and the Morley Institute to address what can be called nothing less than the “Crisis in education.” The opinions collected here demonstrate, in the spirit of John Paul II’s Ut Unum Sint, that people of good will from differing religious backgrounds, or no … Read more
Thus we begin 1998, declared by our Holy Father as the year of the Holy Spirit. Surely, on this, the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this country could use a strong infusion of that least understood person of the Blessed Trinity. There is no better way to get ready for the battles of the … Read more
In the winter of 1980, I faced my first class at Mercer University in Atlanta, an “Introduction to Religion” course for ten students in the evening program. The brightest of them was already well-established as the financial controller of a hotel on Peachtree Street. Two decades later, she teaches philosophy and humanities at The University … Read more
When reporting on Always Our Children, the secular media failed to note that this was not a document issued by the entire NCCB. What must be said at the outset is that a small committee of the bishops’ conference should not be allowed to use the media to shape opinion on Church teaching. Structural changes … Read more
I heard our president on the radio this morning, announcing, “We must make sure that parents are able to spend time with their children whenever they can.” If the “we” had been the American people, not the government, then the comment was merely an obvious truism. Apparently, though, the president feels that the facts—a fifty … Read more
It has been a great privilege to edit the pages that follow. Imagine having dozens of reflections on our Holy Father, written by the best Catholic minds of our age, with which to arrange a fitting tribute to this Man of the Century. We at Crisis dedicate this issue to him for what his leadership, … Read more
Reading, said Josemaria 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 Church. Thomas Merton, we recall from Seven Storey Mountain, was started on his road to the Church by the accidental discovery … Read more
Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb of Mobile recently told a story that should be treated as a parable for Catholics in America. His Excellency attended a local banquet as a guest of honor and, appropriately, was seated in everyone’s view on the dais. As the jokes of the after-dinner speakers grew more and more vulgar, he found … Read more
Fifteen years have passed since Ralph McInerny and Michael Novak gave birth to Crisis. Their investment of a few thousand dollars gave the Church a new and lasting voice. What began as Catholicism in Crisis, a cry of protest against the liberal Catholic establishment, grew into a multifaceted movement for the promotion of Catholic culture. … Read more
Just when you think that nothing good can come out of Miramax, it comes up with this gem of a movie, Wide Awake. This story of Joshua (Joseph Cross), a ten-year-old boy who searches for God in a Catholic boys school in suburban Philadelphia, is breathtaking in its directness and simplicity. This is a movie … Read more
Anyone who thinks the Church in America is in danger should spend a few weeks with me on the road. In the past few months I have witnessed many many instances of renewed vitality among Catholics. Emerging out of this remarkable growth is a new alignment among orthodox Catholics, a network that is already challenging … Read more
Some cliches, like some books, seem wise when we are young. Most of the D. H. Lawrence I admired when I was twenty sounds pretty silly to me now. I remember embracing the cliché about the inferiority of institutional religion as opposed to personal “religiousness.” In those days, I bought the assumption that institutions necessarily … Read more
At present, more rap singers have been killed than abortionists. I was sitting on an airport shuttle bus when I overheard two black men in their thirties discussing the second murder of a rap singer. “People need to see that this isn’t just about music.” I think I know what he means. Taste never has … Read more
It was kind of Commonweal to invite me to a discussion of the Common Ground Project. We gathered at Fordham’s Law School, representing a wide spectrum of Catholic opinion—the editors of Crisis, America, National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, and National Catholic Register. Here was an unprecedented opportunity to address our differences on doctrine and dissent. But … Read more
Dear Warren: Your letter telling me of your decision not to renew your subscription to aims raises several important issues I want to address. I am doing this publicly, with your permission, because you probably represent other Crisis readers who wonder why, as you put it, we spend “all that intellectual energy blasting away at … Read more
I have always been puzzled by the wide popularity of C. S. Lewis. I have wondered how many of Lewis’s readers, or fans of Shadowlands, understand the countercultural implications of his thought. Here was a figure who deserved to be popular, but does his wide popularity mean that he has been misunderstood? The Problem of … Read more