By Carl E. Olson on Jan 13, 2021 10:58 pm
The veteran German journalist Peter Seewald first met Joseph Ratzinger nearly thirty years ago. Since then he has published two best-selling book length interviews with Cardinal Ratzinger—Salt of the Earth: An Exclusive Interview on the [...]
Read in browser »
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 […] Read More
By CWR Staff on May 13, 2020 11:58 pm
Editor’s note: This essay, written by Hans Urs von Balthasar in 1988, was published in the May 2020 issue of KIRCHE heute (Church today) and is republished here in English, in slightly different form, with [...]
Read in browser »
Over the past half-decade or so, blogs – which along with discussion boards of various types, had long provided the main venues for conversation and expression on the Internet – have been thoroughly usurped by [...]
Read in browser »
In the 1970’s, the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and his episcopal allies advanced the notion that Catholic politicians should not be judged only, or even primarily, by their position on abortion. Abortion was merely one strand in a rich and finely woven “seamless garment” of Catholic social teaching in defense of life. Numerous other issues, […]Read More
By Dwight Longenecker on Mar 07, 2020 03:59 pm
Like a queen who rides a bicycle, Tom Holland’s “Dominion” is both majestic and down-to-earth. From antiquity to modernity, Mr. Holland traces a sneaky thesis that Christianity has changed the world—transforming it from the inside out. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland (624 pages, Basic Books, 2019) Every once ...
Read in browser »
Character formation, civics, and the inculcation of the best of our traditions are inseparable from any meaningful idea of education, writes Yuval Levin. Conservatives will now have to press that case — and help our fellow citizens see its promise.
READ MORE
The Three Conservative Burkes: Hayek, Strauss, and Kirk
Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro | AEI Economic Policy Working Paper Series
Two months into his pontificate, Pope Francis canonized the 813 martyrs of Otranto, the largest such group in recorded Catholic Church history. Five months later, Francis beatified another large group, 499 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Francis continues to emphasize martyrs over confessors, the name given to blessed persons who died of natural causes. Over 100 martyrs’ causes for Guatemala are at various stages of investigation for eventual beatification. Papal attention of this magnitude for a small country such as Guatemala seems, at first glance, to be excessive, but this pattern is not an outlier, constituting part of the pontifical global perspective articulated first by St. John Paul II and now Francis. This paper assembles data on martyrs chosen by popes from 1588 (Pope Sixtus V) to early 2020 (Francis).
By George Stanciu on Mar 09, 2020 04:00 pm
The most important question a person can ask is the philosophical question, “Who am I?”, because without knowing who we truly are, we will not be sure that what we seek is good for us and what we try to avoid is bad. The unexamined answer given to the philosophical question determines to a ...
Read in browser »
By Charles Yost on Mar 11, 2020 04:00 pm
The admonitions of Byzantine’s unionists resonate well beyond the Fall of Constantinople—if we had but ears to hear them. Indeed, we today, standing amidst the threatened walls of the house of the West that was once known as Christendom must cherish a culture of Christian solidarity, the conviction that the City of God is ...
Read in browser »
By CWR Staff on Mar 19, 2020 11:42 am
In Behold the Pierced One (pp.97-98), Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) wrote: “When Augustine sensed his death approaching, he ‘excommunicated’ himself and undertook public penance. In his last days he manifested his solidarity with the public [...]
Read in browser »
By Elizabeth Eastman on Mar 19, 2020 04:00 pm
Eva Brann’s contributions to American Political Thought is a starting point that allows the student to grasp the heart of her pursuits—that is, education. For Dr. Brann, the effort to understand the principles of the Declaration of Independence or discern how best to educate the citizens of a democratic republic can take place between ...
Read in browser »
Few books have caused so much controversy even before they were published than did From the Depths of Our Hearts, a new defense of clerical celibacy in the Roman Church by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Robert Cardinal Sarah. On January 14, Benedict’s private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, told the Italian news agency ANSA that, […]Read More
Male and Female He Created Them. And for a Good Reason Anthony Esolen
It has been just six years since I wrote Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, warning against the fantasy that two members of the same sex can marry one another, when they cannot even have sexual relations but can only mimic them. I founded my arguments not upon Scripture or the teaching of the Church—indeed I did not […]