The Narthex
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More on Church Growth
Thinking outside the box about what our Church has now
By John M. Grondelski | May 7th 2024 11:58 AMIn a recent post I criticized the wave of parish closings and the overall mania for “downsizing” the Church in the United States. I argued, against the naysayers who cite “numbers” and “statistics,” that if bishops and priests acted like bishops and priests rather than statisticians and actuaries, they’d stop…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Future of Easter
If the Pope aims to fix a 'common' Easter with the Orthodox, then discussion is long overdue
By John M. Grondelski | May 6th 2024 12:01 PMThis past Sunday, May 5, was Easter in various parts of the Orthodox Church which still use the Julian Calendar for liturgical purposes. To these Orthodox: Christos voskrese! Voistinnu voskrese! (Christ is risen! He is truly risen!) I mention Orthodox Easter because while this year (as is typical) it falls…
READ FULL BLOG POSTOn Dignity: Doubling Down
'Dignitatis Infinita' distinguishes four dimensions of our dignity
By James Hanink | May 3rd 2024 4:48 PMEven Alasdair MacIntyre, among the greatest of living Thomists, thinks that believers might do better to argue from justice rather than to appeal to human dignity. And Harvard’s Steven Pinker writes derisively of the “stupidity of dignity.” Critics admit that the rhetoric of dignity surfaces in the United Nations Universal…
READ FULL BLOG POSTOn Ecclesiastical Growth
I do not believe the “Holy Spirit” is leading us into ecclesiastical shrinkage and retreat
By John M. Grondelski | May 1st 2024 12:05 PMA subtle aspect of last Sunday’s First Reading has to do with ecclesiastical growth. The main thrust of the reading was the suspicion with which the Church in Jerusalem (i.e., Peter and the other Apostles) initially received Paul, former persecutor and now evangelist, who “spoke out boldly in the name…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Difference between Moral Obligation & Self-Will
The 'right to define meaning & the universe' only works if you make yourself author & lord of that universe
By John M. Grondelski | April 30th 2024 12:06 PMOver 65 years ago Karol Wojtyła wrote on “The Significance of Obligation.” In that text, Wojtyła probed the universal human experience of obligation -- “I ought to do X” -- asking what it tells us about itself. That experience teaches us three things: about obligation itself, about responsibility, and about…
READ FULL BLOG POSTLarge-scale Child Abuse
Book publishers, school librarians, and teachers sue to corrupt children
By James Thunder | April 29th 2024 12:08 PMOn April 16, the Wall Street Journal reported that five large book publishers have joined the case filed by a sixth large publisher to prevent the State of Iowa from restricting the purchase or use of certain books for school libraries and classrooms (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, “Major Publishers Join Iowa…
READ FULL BLOG POSTImmanence Dominance
We need regularly to puncture our secular, flattened time to let God in
By John M. Grondelski | April 25th 2024 12:10 PMIn the wake of Vatican II, all sorts of Catholic practices and popular devotions were deconstructed. The process often occurred for simplistic and callow reasons, with no thought to why those practices and devotions had become so established or what would be lost -- including in terms of follow-on effects…
READ FULL BLOG POST'The Old Man's Tree' and 'The Boy's Tree'
Stories of men who enjoyed a deep familiarity with other living things
By James Thunder | April 24th 2024 11:56 AMYou may remember having an adult read to you, or you reading to a child, The Giving Tree (1964), written and illustrated by the late Shel Silverstein (1930-1999). This book was the subject of a sophisticated symposium in the January 1995 issue of First Things, a magazine edited by the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTOn Non-Compete Clauses
Should contracts that limit post-employment in the same general field be banned?
By John M. Grondelski | April 23rd 2024 11:49 AMThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected Tuesday to vote on a regulation banning “non-compete” clauses in employment contracts. Non-compete clauses are provisions in employment contracts that prohibit employees from working in that profession for a certain period of time or within a certain radius of the former employer. They…
READ FULL BLOG POSTMasking Attitudes
Activists chant 'death to America' while cowering behind surgical masks
By John M. Grondelski | April 19th 2024 3:23 PMLast weekend, as Iran launched missiles and drones on Israel, that coterie of pro-terrorist leftists Lenin once aptly titled “useful idiots” were launching protests in various American cities. One social media posting showed a group in Chicago learning Persian. They were learning marg bar Asra’eyl (“death to Israel”) and marg…
READ FULL BLOG POSTNatural Law & the Public Forum
Key points about natural law, its foundation, and how to introduce it into debate
By James Hanink | April 19th 2024 11:07 AMIn Catholic circles the concept of natural law is fairly familiar. I say “fairly” because I’m not sure that many Catholics could give an account of what natural law is. I’m even less sure that many Catholics could draw on natural-law thought when, and if, they enter debates in the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTArs Loquitur, Ars Ambulandi
There's an art to walking and to talking; both are compromised by iPhones
By John M. Grondelski | April 18th 2024 2:48 PMEtiquette as an expectation and as part of upbringing was once taken for granted. For a German, to say somebody lacks Kinderstube is an insult: it means that person is wanting in upbringing. He is boorish. Kinderstube was taken for granted because people rightly assumed that living with others in society is…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA 'Come to Jesus' Message
Christian 'welcome' goes through sin, repentance, and conversion
By John M. Grondelski | April 15th 2024 11:48 AMThe past few years have seen a preoccupation in various ecclesiastical quarters about the Church’s “welcome.” It’s a strange preoccupation for an institution that has been around roughly two millennia and hitherto seemed to lack neither clarity about its welcome message nor success in its promotion. This year’s readings for…
READ FULL BLOG POST‘It Can’t Happen Here’
How can we point the accusing finger when we ourselves are so compromised by evil?
By David Daintree | April 12th 2024 2:22 PMOn several occasions at the end of WWII, army commanders who liberated German concentration camps forced local people to file through, under guard, meet some of the prisoners, and witness for themselves the horror of it all. For most of those people the experience must have been deeply traumatic, and…
READ FULL BLOG POSTTrue and False Abortion History
It’s not true that abortion was unregulated in America before 1821
By John M. Grondelski | April 11th 2024 2:35 PMMuch wailing and gnashing of teeth followed the Arizona Supreme Court's recent upholding of the state’s 1864 abortion act. The wailers' false narrative asks: How can we be governed by a 160-year-old law? If you listen to abortionists, they will try to spin a fake history of abortion law, originally…
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