I used to consider Crisis to be one more useless publication bewailing the current problems in the Church without making the effort to analyze the root causes and demonstrating the courage to take action against them. Instead they have a go-along-get-along attitude towards the powers that be, whether those powers be ecclesiastical (American bishops) or secular (Pres. Bush).
There's a lot of publications that fit into that category, but Crisis crossed over the line from useless into despicable when they attempted to "shoot the messenger" with their attack on Michael Rose. Then in December they ran an article basically accusing all traditionalists (and all popes prior to Vatican II) of being anti-semites. At this point I have to consider them both dangerous and unscrupulous.
Like all Catholic publications, however, none of whom pay much (if any) money, they usually take whatever is sent to them. So a good article like this one can still be published in a worthless magazine.
One more answer: Here are some quotes from the Michael Rose article in New Oxford Review:
When Goodbye, Good Men was published, Alice von Hildebrand (who wrote the Foreword to the Aquinas edition) and Fr. Kenneth Baker, Editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review, both warned me that I would be attacked, but I never seriously considered that the attack would come from Crisis magazine and other so-called conservative Catholic publications. The net effect of these reviews has been to draw attention away from the issues in the book and focus on the author. Unfortunately, for Crisis, Michael Rose has become the issue. In many ways this mimics what has transpired in Catholic seminaries over the past several decades. (And certainly mimics what happened in Kellenyi’s case.) Those who dare go against the status quo are singled out for particularly harsh treatment and persecuted to no end. The stock tactic is to discredit the source by calling him psychologically unfit. In this case, Crisis’s argument rests almost entirely on discrediting the primary source, Joseph Kellenyi. But if Kellenyi is not a crackpot, which he is not, then Crisis’s article entitled "A Question of Integrity" would more aptly apply to Crisis magazine itself.But the hit piece by Sandra Miesel (in the same month that this article by Michael Rose was run in NOR) shows that we have not "seen the last of such gullibility." Apparently Crisis has set itself up as hit man against those on the right who step out of line. As Michael Rose says, "Those who dare go against the status quo are singled out for particularly harsh treatment and persecuted to no end. The stock tactic is to discredit the source by calling him psychologically unfit." This sounds exactly like the same tecnique used in the Sandra Miesel article. It will be a long time before they lose the reputation as being the supposedly "conservative" Catholic magazine that in the words of Michael Rose is "willing to do the dirty work for liberal Catholics."Crisis magazine’s defense of a troubled and shrinking liberal seminary seems strangely out of character, and I hope it reflects a temporary lapse in judgment. The Pope has ordered a "serious" investigation of seminaries affiliated with the U.S. Church, with particular regard to dissent, homosexual cliques, and the abuse of psychological testing. Those who wish to cover up these crippling problems will no doubt brandish the Crisis article. That Crisis has been willing to do the dirty work for liberal Catholics reveals an astounding naïveté — and let’s hope we’ve seen the last of such gullibility.