In the orgy of self-indulgent masochism that so many leaders of our cultural and educational institutions are enjoying while America’s cities burn, a few truly stand out as remarkable. Certainly, CNN’s gleeful reportage that “NASA drops racially charged nicknames of celestial bodies” was unique—and almost as silly as Aunt Jemima’s and Uncle Ben’s summary dismissal [...]

For those of us who recall Senator Biden’s leadership in crafting the most racially biased drug and incarceration policies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it is difficult to take him seriously when he claims to believe that black lives matter to him. Biden did not seem to worry about black lives in 1984 when he [...]

The black family, as an institution, survived slavery. The black family, as an institution, survived Jim Crow. Under quite unimaginable pressure from systematic and institutional racism, black Americans fought tenaciously to protect the institution of the family. It is evident that blacks understood in their bones that the larger society and certainly not the government [...]

Over the last few years, some unjust blue-on-black killings have led to a growing consensus that racism is systemic, pervading every institution and social structure of shared life in America. It is a conclusion unmoored from fact. I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, during the Rosa Parks era, when signs reading “Colored” and “White” hung [...]

Karens are everywhere, notes a June 30 article in the Washington Post, and they are the most addictive thing to watch in America’s disastrous summer of 2020. For the uninitiated, a “Karen” is a pejorative term for a white woman who is “perceived to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is considered [...]

Give me Attila the Hun over our present-day homegrown barbarians. There was something honest about the old-fashioned barbarians. Whether they were the Huns or the Vikings, or the Vandals or the Visigoths, there was something honest about them. They made no bones about it: they were going to sweep down, burn your village, rape your [...]

Baron Friedrich von Hügel was born in Germany but spent most of his life in England, having married into the distinguished family of Herberts. He was a popular spiritual writer in the Anglo-Catholic sphere of the early 20th century. One of his works, The Life of Prayer, is a short treatise that questions the assumption, [...]

When the attacks—legal and otherwise—on Confederate monuments and heritage began to ramp up, I warned in various venues that it would not stop there. And, of course, such disparate characters as Kate Smith and Columbus followed in that train. But ever since the eruption of riots across the nation and the rest of the Western [...]

The most striking thing about the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta was that up until the moment the police officer was about to place a cuff on his left hand, Brooks had been obeying police instructions and conversing pleasantly with them. Then, suddenly, he turned wild and struggled mightily with the two officers. What [...]

“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been…. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white [...]

Progressivism is not an ideology, but a political religion. Black Lives Matter is not a political movement: it’s a secular cult. I’m sure Crisis readers need no convincing on either point. But, should any doubts remain, consider the case of the Reverend Daniel Patrick Moloney. Until June 9, Father Moloney served as Catholic chaplain for [...]

“We could have a summer of love.” — Jennifer Durkan, Mayor of Seattle “At last I am free!” declared Martin Niemoller, holding a small book as the prison door was locked behind him. He had been allowed to keep a Bible, and his words would have been an inscrutable paradox only to those who do [...]

What if we treated the issue of race in our criminal justice system as we do in our medical system? That is, not as a cause but as an index. What do I mean? Statistics in the criminal justice system show that blacks are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, incarcerated, and victims [...]

The Vatican’s Secretariat of State is embroiled in scandal after one of their dubious $100 million real estate deals (in London!) went south. Did Cardinal Parolin know about his underlings’ questionable business ethics? Did Pope Francis? Is the mafia involved? And did these shady dealers frame Cardinal Pell when he found them out? Meanwhile, bishops [...]

“When men follow justice, the whole city blooms, the earth bears rich harvests, and children and flocks increase, but to the unjust all nature is hostile, the people waste away from famine and pestilence, and a single man’s sin may bring ruin on a whole city.” — Hesiod From Rome to Washington, the Successors to [...]

Editor’s note: This open letter was written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò to President Donald J. Trump in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and anti-police riots in the United States. It is reprinted here. June 7, 2020 Holy Trinity Sunday Mr. President, In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides [...]

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” So wrote Vladimir Lenin. The Communist Revolution which he engineered did seem to pack many decades of change into a relatively short time. The old tsarist order was quickly overthrown, and, almost overnight, Russia was transformed from a Christian country to an [...]

Only the gifted pen of a Tom Wolfe could have minted the generation-defining sobriquet, radical chic. It first appeared in a long monograph in New York magazine in 1970, where the author wrote a withering piece describing a fashionable cocktail party at the West Side apartment of Leonard Bernstein. The impresario had invited the glitterati [...]

“To fight racism, Catholics must hunger for justice like we do for the Eucharist.” This was the headline of a joint editorial piece published on America, the Jesuit magazine, upon the aftermath of a week’s worth of mob protest, extensive looting, and the disintegration of public law and order. In just a few words, the [...]