Sarah Cain, The Crusader Gal

The arsonist charged with the Palisades Fire wants to destroy the rich, but what all communists really want to do is burn civilization itself. Read it yourself: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/when-envy-becomes-revolutionary-the

In a culture that avoids death, we lose sight of how to live. Let’s rethink success, comparison, and moral clarity through mortality.

There is an expanding worldview, even amongst Catholics, which sees children not as an end unto themselves but as a mere choice among many, a status symbol, an indicator of financial stability, or simply the means of happiness for unfulfilled couples. In this understanding, children become merely useful or not, timely or not, wanted…or not. It distorts the understanding of marriage and rips at the fabric of the family. My latest for Crisis Magazine: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/sterilizing-the-poor-with-despair

A state is never neutral. It encourages certain choices by what it makes easier. Now that laws are making death easier than care, an implicit statement is being made about human worth. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/a-state-against-its-own-people

When we make idols of a criminal class, we make victims of the upright. California plans to use taxpayer funds to pay for immigration defense attorneys for those facing deportation. It represents a perverse redistribution of resources away from the innocent. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/the-injustice-of-taxpayer-funded

The Triduum is upon us. These are the three days in which we walk with Christ through his darkest moments—those times that were so monstrous because of us. It’s also a time in which we see so clearly that He knows what it is to suffer in every way, not only in the more direct manner as upon the Cross, but in the preparation for that end: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/have-a-blessed-triduum

Performance culture doesn’t just encourage people to lie. It teaches them to disappear into a mere echo of the crowd: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/losing-oneself-to-performance

When a premature baby fights for life, the natural response should be compassion. Increasingly, it is something else. What does it mean when even the sight of a child feels like an accusation https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/why-a-premature-baby-feels-like-an

We don’t have to pretend that we dislike modern conveniences, but we must acknowledge that we have souls, and live accordingly. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/turn-off-the-noise-light-a-candle

Even in wartime, people still had to choose whether to marry, baptize, build, and hope. We are no different. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/when-the-world-tilts-living-in-uncertain

What if the ashes remind us not only that we are dust, but that we are meant to refract divine light? Perhaps you already have loved ones who are doing so. Read it at: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/the-light-we-leave-behind

Perhaps we should ask what kind of culture is forming young men who feel untethered from reality.

You’re listening to a podcast dedicated to narrations of my written work, and that will continue. I’ve also started a separate daily podcast with my co-host, Jakob Kraft, where we comment on the news. To check out that show, visit RiseRight.org.

Hillary Clinton has written an op-ed for The Atlantic that is permeated with moral indignation. She decries “MAGA’s War on Empathy” and then engages in a one-woman war on Truth.

A snowstorm has a way of reminding us how small we are. For all our technology, we wait and hope just as our forebears did.

Lauren Southern’s memoir shows how the populist right devolved, destroying its main actors and leaving audiences lost. We can’t build a civilization on outrage. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/outrage-is-not-a-moral-vision-lauren

We exhaust ourselves trying to plan futures we were never given grace to survive. There’s no God in chess, but there is in real life. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/theres-no-god-in-chess

A diocese’s seminarians reflect its spiritual ecology. So why dismantle what was working? The Diocese of Charlotte is delaying ordinations and stripping seminarians of their cassocks, while forcing them into a year of lay work mid-formation. Read the article: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/when-a-diocese-undermines-its-own-vocations

There is a growing ideological trend that seeks to deprive those broadly considered to being “on the right” of any and all rights, through dehumanization and the systematic exclusion from key institutions. I lived this reality in a small way when I was made a victim of a minor crime in an American city. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/01/04/unworthy-of-justice-how-ideology-determines-victims/

Christianity has never been a faith of mere sentiment. From the first century onward, it has made a claim on the whole person, and it comes into sharp focus at Christmas. Read the article: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/the-claim-christianity-makes-at-christmas

Five books stood out this year. In an age of excess, noise, and content masquerading as wisdom, these were rare companions: books that changed the way I think, pray, judge, and remember. From Boethius on suffering and providence, to C.S. Lewis’ medieval imagination, to ecclesial indifference, and the loss of ritual, these are books worth keeping and rereading. Read this article instead: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/five-books-that-can-change-your-soul

Another school stabbing. More calls for metal detectors. But metal detectors don’t fix a culture that can’t raise children. Read it: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/the-moral-collapse-that-metal-detectors

Years after vilifying dissenters, the FDA now concedes vaccine deaths. But the damage to bodies, souls, and public trust cannot simply be footnoted. This late reckoning reveals more than it resolves.

Prefer to watch the video? You can do that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8vT1kecJRI

If we treat people like projects to be optimized, we shouldn’t be surprised when everything becomes cold: medicine, workplaces, even our own homes. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/inside-the-sterile-doctors-office

(Just make sure they are the right ones.) Modern society treats judgment as a sin and prejudice as a crime. But without them, we lose all standards, and even justice itself. Theodore Dalrymple saw this decay firsthand. We cannot reject all prejudices, but we can choose wisely.

Our language has grown timid. We say “karma,” not “justice.” “The universe,” not “God.” But empty words make empty vision. They flatten our imaginations and mislead our aims. Read: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/dont-blame-the-universe

When “peace” means surrendering the truth, it’s not peace at all. Pope Leo XIV’s prayer with King Charles III reveals what happens when faith becomes diplomacy and when nations built on Christ forget who their true King is.

Our culture worships comfort and efficiency, even in death. But human dignity isn’t found in control; it’s seen in the endurance of suffering, the reality of grief, and the power of love in unbearable circumstances.

It was claimed that having the TLM at parishes was divisive. So, paradoxically, faithful Catholics were forcibly divided from their parish communities and sent long distances away, that they may not worship in the same spaces as their neighbors. https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/inside-the-remaining-charlotte-tlm

Our ancestors built for Heaven. We build for efficiency. But in Buffalo, I found a church that still remembers what beauty is for.

The crowd at Charlie Kirk’s memorial reminds us of a reality that we have forgotten: that those who die for a cause only inspire others to follow them. We live in an age of comfort and uninspired leaders. We crave something more.

We claim to be better than the people of pre-modernity: learned, developed, civilized. But our most vulnerable experience a different reality. What do we do when that homosexual couple in the family texts a photo of the baby that they purchased through surrogacy? https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-slave-market-in-our-midst

Have you considered the reality of how many people you have seen die, thanks to the advent of social media? After all of our desensitization, why do you think the recent deaths of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarukska hit differently? Here’s what I think. Watch on Youtube instead: https://youtu.be/z26WwdOiJvk

When a man known for calm debate is gunned down, we can no longer pretend the “culture war” is just words. Charlie Kirk’s murder marks the moment when violence became the Left’s argument. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/did-a-bullet-win-the-argument

“It’s not political,” they say. But the Annunciation church shooting didn’t happen in a vacuum. Attempts at neutrality in the face of cultivated madness condemn us to a self-imposed blindness.

In modern Britain, flying the national flag has become an act of protest. What does it mean when patriotism itself is treated as subversive, and what warning does this hold for the rest of the West?

We don’t know how to rest because we are somewhat under-developed. An educational system (and corresponding societal structure) set up solely to create workplace skills has resulted in a people who don’t know who they are when departed from that work.

I was interviewed live by Deacon Jim Thorndill on Holy Family Radio, and the conversation is now available. I was discussing my book, the decline of the West, and my journey in the faith. Originally posted: https://www.holyfamilyradio.net/featured/sarah-cain-interview/

Surrogacy is evil because it commodifies children and exploits women. But adoption into disordered homes isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a different one. It severs a child from the right to a mother and father, and calls the result “love.” The soft Right won’t say this. Some even defend it. That’s not compassion. That’s cowardice, and it’s betrayal.

I joined Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J. on The Catholic Current to discuss the frenzy that occurred after a priest denied Holy Communion to a politician who voted in favor of euthanasia.

“Adulting” isn’t a joke. It’s a cry for help from a generation that was never formed, only managed. What if the problem isn’t that young people won’t grow up, but that no one ever raised them to?

There is something chilling about an oligarchy that no longer even pretends to care whether the public believes its lies—when it abandons even the pretense of being representative of the people.

Michelle Obama claims that women are discouraged from acting with confidence and that real freedom begins when we’re no longer bound by family. But is self-focus true liberation—or a fast track to despair?

In recognition of the holiday, I decided to release a video about what we ought to cheer and cherish here in the United States, by looking at the state of modern culture in Britain. Happy Independence Day! Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/K5eVuqrJK-8

It is a strange feature of our times that when a priest fulfills his sacred duty, it becomes news. Such is the case with Fr. Ian Vane, who rightly refused Holy Communion to British MP Chris Coghlan after Coghlan’s public support for assisted suicide.

They’re asking if your newborn is homosexual or GenderQueer. No, really. A New Jersey hospital gives parents a sexuality-and-gender questionnaire moments after birth. This isn’t about medicine. It’s about remaking humanity.

America is engulfed in protests once again, under the auspices of moral indignation and compassion. Yet not far below the surface, we can see a driving revolutionary ideology that is propelled by an unholy union of resentment and covetousness.

The USNS Harvey Milk is finally being renamed. Why was a Navy ship ever named after a man who preyed on teen boys? What we glorify reveals what we believe. A moral nation cannot celebrate perversion and expect to endure.

Priests in Charlotte are being forced to flatten the liturgy and betray their vocation. This isn’t about unity—it’s about control. A reflection on the harm being done under the guise of reform.