June 18, 2019
by Msgr. Robert Batule
What is the relationship between cultural relativism and moral relativism? In trying to answer this question, we find some remarkable issues converging. If we ignore these convergences, we will miss opportunities to improve upon the moral tenor of our personal lives and the moral character of our society at the same time. Allan Bloom opens [...]
December 10, 2018
by Marie Tejklova
Adultery is sinful, marriage is indissoluble, and divorce is forbidden. Let us assume that we accept the validity of these precepts in principle—but is it possible to apply them in practice, without committing a serious injustice to individuals in difficult cases? Every statement only covers a limited part or aspect of reality, and in this [...]
July 26, 2018
by Edvard Lorkovic
I was recently asked by a student group at my university to participate in a panel discussion about the humanities. Having been asked the rather loaded question, “why are the humanities needed more now than ever?,” the panelists were expected to defend the humanities, presumably against some charges or enemies that are particularly contemporary. But [...]
October 9, 2017
by Fr. James V. Schall
At first sight, we all know what happened in Las Vegas. A man by the name of Paddock locked himself in a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Below, in the courtyard, country/western musicians were performing in concert before thousands of music fans. The man had been into real [...]
June 15, 2017
by Regis Nicoll
It took but a few decades for the law written on the human heart, engraved on stone, and honored for millennia to be largely lost on the collective conscience. Today, instead of the Ten Commandments, there is one: “Thou shalt not judge.” Oddly, in a time when the concept of “sin” has also lost its [...]
October 6, 2016
by Krissie Allen
“Facts don't matter.” The first time I heard these words they came from a teacher to an audience of students during a presentation intended to celebrate black history. As part of the presentation, the teacher had intended to illustrate racial injustice in this country by showing pictures of the infamous “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests [...]
June 15, 2016
by Jonathan B. Coe
Millennials—who most researchers and commentators identify as that generation born from the early 1980s to 2000—may grow weary of hearing their parents and grandparents say, “Young people today seem more self-centered than in my day,” but their forebears are right. Their narcissism, in comparison to past generations, has been empirically verified in the work of [...]
March 9, 2016
by Tyler Blanski
Have you ever overheard people discussing how world religions are basically the same, and only superficially different? “We have different opinions about the small stuff,” someone says, “but when it comes down to the essential beliefs, every religion is the same.” This has been described as the “God on the Mountain” perspective. God (or whatever [...]
September 22, 2015
by Michael Dauphinais
The recent revelations surrounding the selling of fetal body parts by Planned Parenthood highlight a crisis in contemporary society depicted in Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. With uncanny insight, Pope Francis had written, “the culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects…. Is [...]
April 28, 2015
by James Jacobs
The homilist, a priest of impeccable orthodoxy, was enumerating the challenges facing the Church today. But I quickly found myself being greatly annoyed at his mention of the attacks being made on “traditional marriage” which were threatening our cherished tradition of “religious liberty.” Now, to be sure, what annoyed was not that he chose to [...]
February 26, 2015
by Ronald Mann
I am sick and tired of this "who am I to judge?" silliness. Only God can judge the state of the human soul. But it is pure humbug to suggest we cannot and should not judge human behavior. Reluctance to judge moral behavior is the inevitable consequence of moral relativism and moral subjectivism that has [...]
June 16, 2014
by Anthony Esolen
A few weeks ago, as readers of Crisis are well aware, Cardinal Ludwig Mueller delivered to the American nuns who head the Leadership Conference of Women Religious the most glorious day they've enjoyed in twenty years. He noticed them. He called them out for heresy, for praising groups who had “moved beyond Jesus,” for honoring [...]
April 30, 2014
by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
In a recent case in North Carolina, a sweet faced and intellectually accomplished nun came to a Catholic high school to address the students about human sexuality. We don’t have the text of sister’s talk, but from the outrage expressed she not only criticized homosexual actions, but was down on divorce and sexual sin. The [...]
August 16, 2012
by Marcia Segelstein
Hadley Arkes is the Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions at Amherst College and one of the country’s most prominent proponents of natural-law jurisprudence. He is the author of numerous books, including First Things (from which the journal took its name) and Natural Rights and the Right to Choose. His latest is a collection of [...]