Integrity in the political arena is rare. Regardless of facts or circumstances, people so instinctively align with their party or “tribe” that many Americans have become nearly indifferent to critical thought or the search for truth. This is partly why Christianity Today editor Mark Galli’s December 19th editorial supporting the impeachment of President Donald Trump ignited much controversy. Few would have predicted such a response from a magazine whose religious readership has widely benefitted from Trump’s pro-life and conservative policies. Given the circumstances, one might admire Christianity Today’s provocative editorial for its refreshing integrity and presumed courage to oppose the …
Author: Manuel Xavier
17 Things Jesus Revealed to St. Faustina About Divine Mercy
As a person, as a country, as a world, do we not need God’s mercy more and more in these times? For the sake of our souls, can we afford not to listen to what Jesus told us through St. Faustina about his mercy and what our response to is should be? Benedict told us “It is a really central message for our time: Mercy as the force of God, as the divine limit against the evil of the world.” Let’s remind ourselves right now. Or learn the highlights for the first time. Divine Mercy Sunday is the perfect day …
G.K.Chesterton Was No Anti-Semite
By Kenneth Colston’s articles and reviews have appeared in The New Criterion; LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture; First Things; New Oxford Review; St. Austin’s Review, and Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He is a retired teacher who lives in St. Louis. Last summer, the Bishop of Northampton rebuffed the cause for canonization of G.K. Chesterton, offering as one of three impediments that “the issue of anti-Semitism is a real obstacle particularly at this time in the United Kingdom.” W.H. Auden fifty years ago and Adam Gopnik in the last decade both brutally tarred Chesterton with anti-Semitism—a charge Chesterton …
God’s Money Doing the Devil’s Work
By Austin Ruse is a contributing editor to Crisis and president of the Center for Family & Human Rights (C-FAM). He is the author of the upcoming Catholic Case for Trump (Regnery, 2020). You can follow him on Twitter @austinruse. They say the homosexual scenes in the new Elton John biopic are the most titillating ever in a mainstream movie. They make Brokeback Mountain look like Bringing Up Baby. Less discussed, perhaps, is the fact that ordinary Catholic pew-sitters paid for it via their Peter’s Pence donations to the Pope. The cash came from a fairly small Malta-based investment fund …
Slap-Happy Pontiff?
By Charles A. Coulombe is a contributing editor at Crisis and the magazine’s European correspondent. He previously served as a columnist for the Catholic Herald of London and a film critic for the National Catholic Register. A celebrated historian, his books include Puritan’s Empire and Star-Spangled Crown. He resides in Vienna, Austria and Los Angeles, California. Now billed as “The Slap Seen ’round the World,” the video footage of the Holy Father’s encounter with an apparently over-zealous admirer at St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Eve has gone viral. In a pontificate that has seen the Catholic world become deeply …
Mary as Co-Redemptrix: God’s Foolishness
By Dr. Christopher J. Malloy is an associate professor of theology at The University of Dallas. He blogs at theologicalflint.com. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25) There is no Catholic dogma on Mary as Co-Redemptrix. However, several popes (Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, and John Paul II) have taught the substance of this title; a separate essay could establish that point. What is the substance of the title? Christ’s work is twofold. First, on Calvary, his suffering gained the treasury of graces for the world’s redemption. Second, as …
Is the West Worth Saving?
By Joseph Pearce a senior contributor to Crisis. He is director of book publishing at the Augustine Institute, editor of the St. Austin Review, and series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions. An acclaimed biographer and literary scholar, his latest book is Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know (Augustine Institute, 2019). Last month I had the privilege and the pleasure of being a panelist during a public debate in Budapest on the thorny subject of “Christian Democracy and the Future of Europe”. I was one of five “experts” on the panel. The others came from Poland, Hungary, Germany, and England. …
Fierce Loyalties
Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church by James Chappel n the last fifty years, most writing about modern Catholicism has treated Vatican II as the great watershed. According to the standard narrative, the Church before the Council was wedded to a stultifying scholasticism and sunk in soul-crushing authoritarianism. After the Council, a new spirit emerged, one of openness and dialogue. At long last, Catholicism shed its defensive, anti-modern mentality and began engaging the contemporary world. In Catholic Modern, James Chappel demolishes this conceit. Chappel describes how, in the course of the twentieth century, Catholicism accommodated …
Thomas Acquinas: A Doctor for the Ages
By Romanus Cessario, O.P., is Professor of Systematic Theology at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts. Why should a medieval Catholic priest merit a place among the most important figures of the second millennium? In part because more than seven centuries after his death his writings and teachings still seem fresh and—more importantly—true. His genius as a thinker and teacher has led thousands of scholars to carry on the intellectual projects and hand on the teachings in philosophy and theology of this thirteenth-century Neapolitan Dominican friar, whose physical size and taciturn spirit prompted some of his youthful confreres to label …
The passive-aggressive pontificate continues—and the Synod approaches
Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?, Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?, co-editor/contributor to Called To Be the Children of God, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius), and author of the “Catholicism” and “Priest Prophet King” Study Guides for Bishop Robert Barron/Word on Fire. He is also a contributor to “Our Sunday Visitor” newspaper, “The Catholic Answer” magazine, “The Imaginative Conservative”, “The Catholic Herald”, “National Catholic Register”, “Chronicles”, and other publications. Update (Sept. 11, 2019): A full CNA transcript of the in-flight …