Fr. George Rutler needs little by way of introduction to Crisis readers. He has been gracing its pages, first in print and then online, for just shy of four decades. Recently, Crisis caught up with Fr. Rutler for an interview on his life as a priest-writer to mark the publication of his latest collection of writings. [...]

I have a friend, a husband and father of three, a Catholic who lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Since 2005, he has been harrassed, threatened, and physically assaulted by Muslim extremists. While I was working on my graduate degree in teaching in 2007, they demanded entry to his home, in which they brandished a gun and [...]

A little more often than now and then, some ruse, hoax, or stratagem upends academe. Recently, a small pod of researchers scandalized “cultural studies” by publishing, in prestigious journals, a plethora of counterfeit studies: make-believe research addressing preposterous issues such as the relation between the intimate anatomy of pets and the gender identities of their [...]

Before 2018 concludes, we should remember two men born a century ago this year who profoundly shaped public discourse in the twentieth century: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. Dec. 11, 1918) and Russell Kirk (b. Oct. 19, 1918). Solzhenitsyn, who lived into the new millennium (he died at age 89 in 2008), was both a Nobel laureate [...]

The film series Brain, Heart, World has just been released. It consists of three episodes each about 30 minutes long. Each episode explores a different realm in which pornography causes harm: the individual, human relationships, and society as a whole. There are some depressing facts to be learned from Brain, Heart, World. For a start, [...]

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.” The opening words to Homer’s Odyssey are among the most famous and recognizable in Western literature. That beginning stanza captures so much of the human condition and [...]

When we review the calamities which afflict so many other nations, the present condition of the United States affords much matter of consolation and satisfaction. Our exemption hitherto from foreign war, an increasing prospect of the continuance of that exception, the great degree of internal tranquillity we have enjoyed, the recent confirmation of that tranquillity [...]

Robots are all the rage these days, promising to automate many of the functions that previously required human beings to fulfill them: factory work, manufacturing, transportation … and, of course, sex. The burgeoning sex robot industry is dedicated to creating increasingly "life-like" animatronic lovers for consumers, with the intention of eventually developing robots that are, [...]

A new documentary, The Creepy Line, suggests that Google is not living up to its primary motto: “Don’t be Evil.” Instead, it is involved in activities that should be viewed with some concern by anyone who values privacy and freedom of speech. Some facts from the film: Google tracks your location history and keeps a [...]

In our polarized nation, an “us versus them” scenario naturally arises. We are not supposed to frame the debate in this way. “Us” should refer to all Americans. “Them” is a term that is better not used at all. This is the central message of Sen. Ben Sasse’s new book, Them: Why We Hate Each [...]

I’m a teacher of some apparent merit and a philosopher of very little. I am decidedly not an educationist. I don’t know, let alone employ, novel theories of education or tricks of the modern pedagogical trade. I read philosophical books with students, talk to them about those books, ask them questions, and attempt to answer [...]

Unlike Waugh, Greene, and Tolkien, David Jones is not a name cited by many Catholics interested in the Catholic literary renaissance of the twentieth century. It is a pity, not only because of Jones’s literary and artistic triumphs of the middle part of the century but also because this multi-talented polymath was a devout Catholic [...]

Although somewhat overshadowed by the allegory of the Cave, the myth of the ring of Gyges, and other powerful images found in Plato’s Republic, the account of the ship of fools is still memorable and compelling. While Socrates—the Athenian philosopher and mentor of Plato—is discussing with his young friends the nature of justice and the ideal [...]

Over the last few decades, “equality” arguments have successfully secured everything from the legalization of abortion, homosexual sodomy, and same-sex “marriage” to the dismantling of the biological basis of gender. Equality (of opportunity) is the cornerstone of the American justice system. The great social movements of our nation—abolition, emancipation, women’s suffrage, and civil rights—all owe [...]

“It’s time to face up to the harms the Sexual Revolution has caused. Whether you’re male or female, straight or gay, young or old, religious or irreligious: what kind of a world do you want to help create? A world in which every child has a legally recognized right to a relationship with both parents? [...]

The bien pensants were elated when Pope Francis canonized St. Junipero Serra in 2015. As was always the case in those halcyon days, the media set aside its disdain for our patriarchal, homophobic Church to applaud (what they believed to be) the Holy Father’s wink-and-nod to their left-wing agenda. The first Hispanic pope canonizing the [...]

The biographies of classical composers could give the impression that irregular behavior has been almost a necessary attribute of great talent. A particularly rank example is the uniquely inventive Renaissance composer of sacred music and madrigals, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, who murdered his wife and her lover, mutilated their corpses, and exposed them naked [...]

“You young devils,” says Satan, the wily old misanthrope, wise in the ways of man, “believe you can damn the human vermin with reasoned arguments. Reason, as you should know, and for your own sake you had better remember, is of the Enemy. When we fight with it, we fight with his own weapons. What [...]

It’s been said that advertising is the world’s oldest profession, with the devil needing only a clever marketing campaign to get Adam and Eve to eat the apple. Whether or not that is true, it certainly is true that we can be swayed by slogans and jingles into doing the silliest things. “You deserve a [...]

As Halloween approaches, the debate over whether Catholics should join in the celebrations has reignited. Many claim it is a harmless holiday for children that Catholics may freely participate in. Others affirm that it has now descended into dark regions with the return of pagan and Satanic imagery; it should thus be off limits. And [...]