John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is the former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. He is especially interested in moral theology and the thought of John Paul II. [Note: All views expressed in his National Catholic Register contributions are exclusively the author’s.] “O blood and water, which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, we trust in you.” Today is the Second Sunday ofEaster and Divine Mercy Sunday. It’s not a Sunday after Easter but a Sunday of Easter, because the entire Easter Season — the 50 days from …
Category: Current Issues
Merciful Mother: Mary, True Model of Trustful Surrender to Divine Mercy
Joseph Pronechen is a staff writer with the National Catholic Register since 2005 and before that a regular correspondent for the paper. His articles have appeared in a number of national publications including Columbia magazine, Soul, Faith and Family, Catholic Digest, Catholic Exchange, and Marian Helper. His religious features have also appeared in Fairfield County Catholic and in major newspapers. He is the author of Fruits of Fatima — Century of Signs and Wonders. He holds a graduate degree and formerly taught English and courses in film study that he developed at a Catholic high school in Connecticut. Joseph and his wife Mary reside on the East Coast. Celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday …
How a successful district attorney became a priest and promoter of Marian devotion
Jim Graves is a Catholic writer living in Newport Beach, California. Fr. Quan Tran is a parochial vicar at St. Bonaventure Parish in Huntington Beach, California, in the Diocese of Orange. He was born in Vietnam, but fled the country at age six with his family after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Encouraged by his father to be a financial success, he became a lawyer and spent nearly a decade as a deputy district attorney in Orange County. Unfulfilled in his profession, he opted instead for the seminary, and was ordained a priest in 2011. He founded Fullness of Grace to help …
Faith, Love, and Obedience: Marks of the True Disciple
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”?, coeditor/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. His new book Praying the Our Father in Lent (2021), is published by the Catholic Truth Society. 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. What is …
Hong Kong Calvary 2021
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), and Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a …
The Easter Explosion
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington, D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. Let me adapt to recent circumstances a thought-experiment theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar proposed decades ago: Imagine that a friend contracts a severe case of COVID-19 and medicine can do no more for him. The doctors inform his widowed mother and us, so we gather with her for the final scene in the drama of this life. The ventilator is removed; the man grows weaker from lack of breath and whispers his final farewells. We hear …
Antigone in a Nutshell
By Joseph Pearce 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). His website is jpearce.co. Sophocles is probably the greatest dramatist in the history of civilization, with the obvious exception of Shakespeare. He lived for ninety years, his life spanning almost the entirety of the fifth century B.C., from 496 to 406. During his long life, which seems to have been spent entirely in …
Outside the Box: Resurrection or Reanimation?
By Sean Fitzpatrick Sean Fitzpatrick is a senior contributor to Crisis and serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic boarding school for boys in Pennsylvania. The earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. —Matthew 27:51-53 West was a materialist, believing in no soul and attributing all the working of consciousness to bodily phenomena; consequently he looked for no revelation of hideous secrets from gulfs and caverns …
America is a Pagan Nation: Now What?
By Eric Sammons Eric Sammons is the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. His upcoming book Deadly Indifference (May 2021) examines the rise of religious indifference and how it has led the Church to lose her missionary zeal. When I logged into Twitter on Easter Monday morning, I was pleasantly surprised. As anyone who has spent time on Twitter knows, timelines related to Catholicism or politics (as mine is) tend to lean strongly negative. Yet on Easter Monday morning, I was flooded with tweets celebrating new members of the Catholic Church. It was a beautiful reminder that God’s grace is always working in the world. But …
On Being Mother and Teacher in Equal Measure: A Reply to Cardinal Schönborn
By Regis Martin Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Martin is the author of a number of books, including Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012) and The Beggar’s Banquet (Emmaus Road). His most recent book, also published by Emmaus Road, is called Witness to Wonder: The World of Catholic Sacrament. He resides in Steubenville, Ohio, with his wife and ten children. One of the earliest …