November 11, 2020
by Declan Leary
The professed intent of the McCarrick Report, released yesterday after much delay, is to shed some light on just how this man managed to rise to such status and power within the Church, all while his habit of sexual abuse were known to so many of his brother-bishops. In another time, in other circumstances, that [...]
November 6, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
“We are a working-class party now. That’s the future.” — Senator Josh Hawley I’ve held off on writing a post-election column, hoping against hope that the votes would be counted quickly and fairly. I suppose that was naïve. At this rate—and regardless of who “wins” in the end—half of the American people will feel cheated [...]
October 27, 2020
by Emily Finley
No one should be surprised by the recent revelation that Pope Francis believes that civil unions between same-sex couples ought to be legal. Just as no one should be surprised by the promotion of Wilton Gregory—Archbishop of Washington, D.C., oligarch, and political activist—to the College of Cardinals this past Sunday. The two are intimately connected, [...]
October 26, 2020
by Jane Stannus
It’s raining spiritually again. The Pope has scandalized faithful Catholics and delighted progressives of every stripe by expressing support for civil same-sex unions. Waugh fans will recall one of English literature’s most obnoxious Canadians, Rex Mottram, receiving instruction for baptism from a priest who quizzes him on his grasp of the doctrine of infallibility. What [...]
October 22, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it. What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.” [...]
October 16, 2020
by Fr. Mark Withoos
“Thank you for your testimony.” With these words, Pope Francis greeted Cardinal George Pell who, on coming out of Covid-19 quarantine, went to meet the Pope in audience. Martyr in the Greek language means “witness” or “testimony.” In essence it is the basic call of every Christian, every follower of Jesus Christ, to give testimony [...]
October 12, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
Bishop Heinz-Josef Algermissen recently published a letter claiming that, during an October 7 meeting with Pope Francis, the Holy Father expressed “dramatic concern” with the state of the German Church. As well he might. Francis has always been wary of the German bishops’ synodal journey, which is being convened to discuss “authority and separation of [...]
October 7, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
“I should like a new Papal Bull every morning with my Times at breakfast.” — William George Ward The kindest thing one can say about Pope Francis’s new social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is that it’s totally incomprehensible. Alas, there’s a great deal more we ought to say about it. I was startled by one particular [...]
October 2, 2020
by Sean Fitzpatrick
Some may be wary of the new book TerraFutura (“FutureWorld”) by Italian environmental activist Carlo Petrini, which features a series of conversations with Pope Francis about “integral ecology” five years after Laudato Si’. In these interviews, the pope comments very truly on something that will help our culture and our planet far more than eco-activism: [...]
August 13, 2020
by Crisis Magazine
The Next Pope is available now from Sophia Institute Press. Photo credit: Vatican Pool/Getty Images
June 12, 2020
by Crisis Magazine
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 [...]
June 11, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
“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 [...]
June 9, 2020
by Fr. Mario Alexis Portella
On May 21, our American homeland survived another terrorist attack when the Syrian-born Adam Alsahli shot a sailor who was guarding the gate at a U.S. Naval base in Corpus Christi, Texas. Investigators found the now deceased Alsahli’s social media accounts containing voluminous Islamic religious posts. The translation of his Twitter profile statement, which is [...]
March 13, 2020
by Fr. Mario Alexis Portella
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t not know where they have laid him.” Such were the words, as recorded in the Gospel of John, of Mary Magdalene when she ran up to Simon Peter and John after she had gone to venerate the body of Jesus and found the tomb [...]
March 12, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
Does the Vatican have a General Directorate for Personnel? This is, perhaps, the most boring question ever posed by a writer in Crisis Magazine. And yet, as we fumble for an answer, we also come a little closer to understanding one of the most confounding papacies in 2,000 years of Christian history. Last Friday, the [...]
March 6, 2020
by Eric Sammons
“Dialogue is our method... The path ahead, then, is dialogue among yourselves, dialogue in your presbyterates, dialogue with lay persons, dialogue with families, dialogue with society. I cannot ever tire of encouraging you to dialogue fearlessly.” —Pope Francis, Address to the U.S. Bishops, September 23, 2015 In the halls of Catholic chanceries around the world, [...]
March 4, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
When the late William F. Buckley set out to find a religion editor for National Review, he was careful to choose a Protestant. Though a Catholic himself, Buckley feared that his magazine—by then, already the flaghship of American conservatism—was becoming “too Catholic.” Eventually, he settled on a bombastic Lutheran minister named Richard John Neuhaus. Alas [...]
February 13, 2020
by Michael Warren Davis
Yesterday, the Holy Father did something completely unexpected: nothing at all. In his long-awaited exhortation on the Amazon Synod, Querida Amazonia, we find the clearest insight into Pope Francis’s thinking on the vocations crisis, both in the Amazon and across the Western world. His solution is not to do away with clerical celibacy. It is [...]
February 5, 2020
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.
Some decades ago, my immediate boss at National Review, the late Priscilla Buckley, was fond of telling an anecdote about her sister-in-law Patricia (Mrs. William F. Jr.) Buckley. During a conversation on the style befitting royalty, Pat interjected vehemently, “Oh if only I were royal, how royal I should be!” Anyone who ever met her [...]
January 15, 2020
by Sean Fitzpatrick
The Two Popes is not so much a picture as it is propaganda. The Netflix original follows the mode of the liberal media, presenting imagined interactions and conversations between Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis (when he was Cardinal Bergoglio) that further an agenda that is bent on denouncing the Catholic Church with slick cinematography. [...]