A sub-category of News.
Being a faithful Catholic in the modern world seems weird to those who have embraced the modernist radical materialism that permeates so much of the culture. The recent claims by Kamala Harris and her campaign surrogates that J.D. Vance is “weird” is really a coded attack on his Catholic faith and his belief that what…
The anonymous ballad whose lyrics we have opened with was penned around 1642. At that time, the Puritan Parliament was beginning its hostilities against not only King Charles I (whom, in the end, it would murder) and his Cavalier supporters, but all that was left of Merry—indeed, Catholic—England. So, too, did it make war on…
Urban Hannon. Thomistic Mystagogy: St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Mass. Foreword by Hugh Barbour, O. Praem. Lincoln, NA: Os Justi Press, 2024. pp. 174. It would never have occurred to medieval disciples of the Angelic Doctor to suppose that he was anything other than a mystagogue, for they inhabited a mystical world whose spell…
Bl. Idefonso Schuster (+1954) wrote about this 11th Sunday after Pentecost, “now the heavy clusters are taking on luscious color upon the smiling hills of the Roman Campagna.” In our northern hemisphere, however you calculate their duration, we are deep into the Dog Days, the dies caniculares, when serious heat imposes on the terrestrial with…
I have read all of P.G. Wodehouse several times, and I am always rereading him—usually more than one book at a time. This seems more necessary now than ever to maintain one’s sanity. As Evelyn Waugh predicted, “Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be…
It was during the pontificate of Paul VI, who has since been raised to the altar, that a gathering of scholars arrived in Rome for a conference on St. Augustine. Drawn by the timeless attractions of the Doctor of Grace, they came, as was fitting, to the center of Catholic Christendom, the Eternal City, for…
I believe opposition to war is as important, or even more important, than opposition to abortion in presidential elections. I realize this is a controversial take to most readers of Crisis, but hear me out. Let me first establish my pro-life bonafides. I believe every single abortion, without exception, is murder and should be illegal….
Editor’s note: to celebrate today’s feast, we publish an excerpt from “On Spiritual Reading” by the saint. To a spiritual life the reading of holy books is perhaps not less useful than mental prayer. St. Bernard says reading instructs us at once in prayer, and in the practice of virtue. Hence he concluded that spiritual…
I demur. The Opening Ceremonies of the Paris Olympics last Friday would have been an insult to Caligula. He merely stood for perversity, sadism, and debauchery, while the opening ceremonies at Paris celebrated much, much more. They boldly trumpeted the end of Christianity, in particular, and of Western Civilization, in general. With their Last Supper…
There is an artistic photograph of Thomas Jolly hanging on a cross, wearing clown makeup. The image is unmistakably Christ on the Cross. Recall that Thomas Jolly is the director/choreographer who also designed the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Paris, where he was accused of blasphemously recreating the institution of the Eucharist, Da Vinci’s Last Supper….
