Ken Craycraft, Author at Catholic Herald

Ken Craycraft

October 22, 2021

As the two-year Synod on Synodality gets under way, its vague objectives  cast a shadow over a Church striving for universality

Standing firm and holding fast

August 26, 2021

The wisdom of Evelyn Waugh provides theological sustenance in these fractious times

Centesimus Annus After 30 Years

May 04, 2021

Like the sabbath, the economy is at the service of the human person, not vice versa. Thus, the measure of a moral economy is the development of the full human person.

The Politics of the Passion

March 30, 2021

Pilate came to flex imperial muscle. With a little shock and awe, he came to Jerusalem to remind the Jews that their primary identification was as Roman subjects.

Obituary: Fr Paul Mankowski, fighter, scholar and friend

September 29, 2020

Fr Paul Mankowski SJ, who has died at the age of 66, was a Jesuit priest of immense erudition. A linguist and literary critic, and an extraordinarily insightful analyst of the ills besetting the Church in his time, Fr Mankowski was also an inveterate controversialist who combined Midwestern frankness with his keen intellect and profound

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Missing John Prine

April 07, 2021

At the recent Grammy Awards celebration, John Prine’s song, “I Remember Everything,” won the prizes for Best American Roots Performance and Best American Roots Song. Prine was not available to accept the trophies, as they were presented almost a year after his death from Covid-19. As we are well into the first anniversary of Covid-related

The Triduum in Four Songs

April 02, 2021

The Easter Triduum unfolds Maundy Thursday, Passion Friday, and Easter Sunday, but it isn’t difficult to think of the agony in the garden as Day 1.5: a bridge in time between the Last Supper and the trial and crucifixion. In any event, doing so fits my purpose in accounting for the events of the Triduum

The Politics of the Passion

March 30, 2021

Is the old saw “religion and politics don’t mix” either emphatically denied or profoundly affirmed by the events of Holy Week? Or is it perhaps some tertium quid? While we cannot deny the confluence (or clash) of political identification and religious meaning in the events of Holy Week, neither can we definitively arrive at one

We Are All Liberal Protestants Now

March 17, 2021

We accept the liberal Protestant privatizing of morality but are shocked by a political culture in which morality is privatized.

Townes Van Zandt: The Demons that Haunt us All

March 10, 2021

Image: Singer-Songwriter Townes Van Zandt in Concert at “Kult” Niederstetten, Germany (undated) CC BY-SA March 7 was the birthday of the late, great Townes Van Zandt, one of the most influential songwriters in contemporary Americana music. Van Zandt never had significant commercial success. What little success he did have was squandered in a haze of

Fairness and Equality

March 10, 2021

Two competing legislative efforts to modify the 1964 Civil Rights Act are pending before the U.S. Congress. Ken Craycraft has a crack at them. US Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT) recently reintroduced the Fairness for All Act (FFA) expressly as an alternative to the Equality Act, which passed the House of Representatives but faces procedural headwind

Lenten Fits and Starts

February 27, 2021

For many of us, Lent is more about failure than success: Maybe that’s the point. We begin Lent (much as we did the New Year) with confidence and determination that this time we will maintain the self-control to sustain our resolution/discipline. For Lent, though, we are even more determined because our discipline is ordered toward

Romney Riffs on Catholic Social Teaching

February 19, 2021

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, recently introduced a child-focused income redistribution bill that resonates with principles of Catholic Social Doctrine. While not perfect, and subject to tweaks and adjustments, the pro-child Family Security Act reflects priorities and creates incentives that resist the traditional conservative

SCOTUS, Covid-19 & Religious Liberty

February 13, 2021

On February 5, the United States Supreme Court partially invalidated California’s Covid-related prohibition on gatherings for religious worship. The Court was divided in its reasoning—four separate Justices wrote statements supporting, qualifying, or dissenting from the result—but the holding is a hopeful indication of this Court’s protection of the free exercise of religion. Six of the

Transgender “Women” Athletes are Male Athletes

February 03, 2021

US President Joe Biden has asserted his policy priorities through a flurry of executive orders (“EOs”). Among these is the “Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination Based on Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” (the “Transgender EO”), one of 17 EOs signed on his first day in office. The ostensible purpose of this EO is

Open Letter to President Biden

January 20, 2021

Dear President Biden: Congratulations on becoming the second baptized Catholic to attain the office of President of the United States. Many Catholics feel somewhat alienated from American political culture, and thus feel a sense of pride when one of our own achieves high public office. Unlike some of our brothers and sisters, I do not

Unnatural Business: The Last Words of Justin Townes Earle

January 16, 2021

Grieving the death of a parent can be incorporated into our moral lives because it’s part of the natural order of things, but there is no proper way to grieve the death of a child. It is not natural grief. It is alien, disordered, lawless, intrusive, obnoxious, repugnant. It is a festering sore that never

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