The Narthex
Random Ruminations #28
Back-to-School Guide for Parents... ERA is Dead... Tim Kaine on the Origins of Human Rights... more
By John M. Grondelski | September 12th 2025 6:47 AMBack-to-School Guide for Parents Family Policy Alliance (FPA) is the brainchild of the recently deceased James Dobson. It monitors legislative and regulatory developments with a direct impact on parental rights which, in many ways, is ground zero in the contemporary assault on the family. Make no mistake about it: When…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Right to Self-Defense in Canada
Legitimate self-defense can be not just a right but, indeed, a duty
By John M. Grondelski | September 11th 2025 11:22 AMCatholic moral theology, including just war theory, always included the concept of self-defense. A victim of aggression has the right to repel that aggression, whether it be a thief breaking into your home or a king marching with his 20,000 troops against your kingdom with 10,000. Nobody questioned that right.…
READ FULL BLOG POSTWhat Is 'True Freedom'?
Many hold to a false notion of freedom, one that treats freedom as an end rather than a means
By John M. Grondelski | September 9th 2025 11:39 AMThe Sunday homily usually reflects on the readings for that day. Typically, that means the Gospel and maybe the First Reading, which often is linked to the Gospel. The Second Reading is usually odd man out since in their wisdom the designers of the new Lectionary decided on a continual…
READ FULL BLOG POSTCardinal Cupich on 'Traditionalism': An Opening to Dialogue
Do we have more active Mass participation these days? Most Catholics don't even go to Mass!
By John M. Grondelski | September 7th 2025 8:56 PMWriting in the Chicago Catholic (Sept. 3, linked below), Cardinal Blase Cupich tries to distinguish between “tradition” and “traditionalism,” invoking Ss. Vincent of Lérins and John Henry Newman on development of doctrine to make his case for Vatican II’s reform of the liturgy. He’s concerned that “traditionalism” is obscuring the Council’s…
READ FULL BLOG POSTIntersections Should Not Be Rainbows
Black-and-white clarity -- not culture war graffiti -- is what a crosswalk demands
By John M. Grondelski | September 4th 2025 11:35 AMA recent tempest in the social-media teapot concerns intersections. Not the kind that over-credentialed academics spin dissertations about in the name of “critical racial theory,” but the literal ones you walk across: crosswalks. Some jurisdictions decided to “celebrate Pride” by painting pedestrian crossings in rainbow colors. The Trump Transportation Department…
READ FULL BLOG POSTEnglish Should Be the USA’s Official Language
Language is the most basic element of assimilation and culture
By John M. Grondelski | September 2nd 2025 12:18 PMPresident Trump issued an Executive Order declaring the U.S. Government should conduct its business in English. That order elicited the usual complaints from the secular accompaniment chorus, who thought it exclusionary and impeding peoples’ access to services. As we’ve seen in pictures from a deportation, it’s not infrequent that family…
READ FULL BLOG POSTNo Judge Is above the Law
No state may exempt itself or its officials from federal authority
By John M. Grondelski | August 28th 2025 11:00 AMHannah Dugan, the Wisconsin circuit court judge who last April berated ICE agents in the Milwaukee courthouse and smuggled a wanted illegal alien out a back door, learned this week that wearing a black robe does not place one above the law. A federal judge ruled that her judicial status…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA Virginia School Facilitated Abortions
Will it turn the governor's race?
By John M. Grondelski | August 27th 2025 9:53 PMA controversy roiling in northern Virginia (NoVA) illustrates the dirty, clandestine alliance between abortionists, the political jurisdictions they’ve bought, and the use of societal infrastructure to advance pre-natal killing. Fairfax County, Virginia, is adjacent to Washington, DC. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) operates all schools in the county. All members…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Judicial Philosophy of Ketanji Brown Jackson
She does not even attempt to mask her activism
By John M. Grondelski | August 26th 2025 11:17 AMThe “jurisprudence” of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, was the subject of an extended essay by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. It’s worth reading (link below). Brown Jackson has repeatedly denounced her colleagues -- including fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor…
READ FULL BLOG POSTWhy is 'Basic Patriotism' Demonized?
A look at the reasons behind antipathy to the flags of England and the USA
By John M. Grondelski | August 25th 2025 12:37 PMRod Dreher, of Benedict Option fame, opined on X that countries where “basic patriotism is demonized” are “on the brink of civil conflict.” He made his observation in response to a post by a British man in Devonshire whose display of the Union Jack in his garden elicited a note…
READ FULL BLOG POSTDads' Views & Summer Jobs
Paternal approaches to reality and experiences of hard work shape kids' political perspectives
By John M. Grondelski | August 22nd 2025 10:40 AMA recent TikTok video posted to X is ostensibly the work of a white mother explaining to her 10-year-old the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. The woman claims that her child asked what differentiated the two and that she explained it by using an analogy involving the homeless.…
READ FULL BLOG POSTReligion: A Matter of Faith or Feelings?
Insipid hymns reveal a trade-in of a Catholicism built on faith and reason for one of emotions
By John M. Grondelski | August 20th 2025 12:33 PMAnthony Esolen has spilled no small amount of ink challenging the doctrinal and other issues that plague contemporary Catholic hymnody. Demonstrating how today’s “Catholic” ditties upend the traditional liturgical principle lex orandi, lex credendi (how we pray expresses what we believe) has almost become a cottage industry online. Recently, Trent…
READ FULL BLOG POSTUnimaginable Things, Love of God, Restless Hearts
Man has a limitless desire for more, which should lead us to our Highest Good
By John M. Grondelski | August 19th 2025 11:08 AMO God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. Through…
READ FULL BLOG POSTHow Many Murders Make an 'Emergency'?
Real love for the poor is ensuring their neighborhoods are safe, not a murder every 46 hours
By John M. Grondelski | August 18th 2025 11:33 AMThe danger with a status quo is that it “normalizes” the prevailing situation. It makes one think the abnormal is somehow "normal." That’s particularly problematic when the status quo is the result of decades of “defining deviancy down,” as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed over 30 years ago…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Significance of the Assumption
Mary shows the more noble status to which humanity has been elevated by Redemption in Christ
By John M. Grondelski | August 15th 2025 11:50 AMThe Solemnity of the Assumption is these days an underappreciated and undervalued holy day. Indeed, next year it won’t even be a feast of precept (a holy day of obligation) because of the American bishops’ “Saturday-or-Monday-get-out-of-Church-free-on-certain-holy-days” rule. The Assumption stands in a straight line from Easter to the Ascension (another…
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